Masters Thesis
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
This Masters of Architecture Thesis comes in Two Parts.
Part One:
"The Texture of Space:
...Some Thoughts on the Nature of What Happens Between Here and There..."
That part is a lengthy and pretty heady academic treatise that doesn't lend itself to this format. I'm just mentioning it here as context because it complimented Part Two (The Design Component) you will see below.
Part Two:
Cumulatively, Both Parts of this Masters Thesis Project provided the structured freedom I needed to research and theorize about the temporal and qualitiative mechanics of human spatial experience. As a design professional (~30) years later, I'm still pondering the implications and plan to write a book.
Structure:
I had a "Client," Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forrest, CA.
Program:
It addressed possibilities for both the built and preserved natural environment. In retrospect, this stuff emerged from seeing things through a crazy unfettered eye focused on an imaginative future the church might have had as it emerged in its real "place" back in 1993-94.
Design Response:
The design response was born out of personal worship experience at the real church site before any permanent architectural site development began. When I was developing this project, Pastor Rick Warren (way before he wrote any famous books such as "The Purpose Driven Life") had just pushed his pulpit (...it was on wheels...) down the road to the new site from the local high school where services had been held. He was followed by a couple hundred parishioners including me. Just a year or so before this, the church had been holding worship venues is spaces such as living rooms, so, acquiring a virgin 79 acre property was a huge deal. One can put all this in context of the mega church and outreach it has become since then.
At the time, money was flowing in an unprecedented manner, but no buildings had been designed or built yet. On the new mass-graded site, two of the parking lots were paved, but worship was being held in a fabric-covered extruded aluminum convention/venue type tent. The tent was awesome in ways that were hard to describe but whatever the vibe was, it was marked by utter simplicity and spartan quality. Evening Christmas and Easter sunrise services were so cold that people brought blankets to put over their jackets so they wouldn't shiver too much. Summers were hot. But the fellowship and worship were more real than I had ever experienced before... and beyond the integrity and love of the faithful gathering there, the experience had at least something to do with the nature of the space coupled with the experience of walking the 1/4 mile from one's car to get there.
The procession started when you drove onto the site up a long winding driveway. As you approached the parking areas at the top of the site you were ushered by parking attendant / greeter volunteers and were finally able to park. You then walked with hundreds of other people up a long series of pathways to get to the tent. All the while, worship music could be heard permeating the air beaconing you to join the worship experience. People sang and prayed as they walked. The whole process elevated the heart rate, prepared the mind, and calmed the spirit in preparation for praise and the opportunity to reflect on God's will for your life. I'll never forget it.
That said, this project is about creating, compartmentalizing, and organizing spaces along a path. Sequential experiences align in such way to meet functional and programmatic needs while providing a procession from the everyday to the sacred and powerful en-mass experience of praise and worship of God.
As a departure point and series if informative guidelines I researched and tapped into several Design Concepts:
Spatial Experience and Awareness: what is the nature of what it means to be "Here", "Between", or "There"
Key Conceptual Terms:
Key Conceptual Terms:
Sacred / Profane
Natural / Built
Axis Mundi
Threshold
Path
Axis Mundi
Threshold
Path
Process / Ritual
Liminality
Liminality
I have LOTS more images including site plans, building plans, sections and perspective shots of two huge (and I think pretty cool) scale models. As soon as I can dig them out of whatever box they are in, I'll include those here also.
As departure points, I studied the spatial relationships of the Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple, and used a couple Biblical Theological statements
