alklay
Senior Member
Nice forms but the cladding is terrible (and cheap looking). I fear what this will look like after a hail storm.
|
|
|
- Thread starter wyliepoon
- Start date
samsonyuen
Active Member
I've seen this from Kennedy for ages. Fugly.
ek1025
New Member
hey guys.. i actually go to this church, I heard it actually won an award? seriously.. I like the whole modern design and all but it was in no way effective to the community of the church ppl IMO. for instance parking space. Although it may not be the building itself, the surroundings latches on to this. we have many problems with parking. and yes drainage system. one of you mention how ugly it was exposed. In the inside, I gotta admit, is quite dull. One can make great use of white wals and such.. but this makes the church feel. incomplete =/.. any thoughts?
wyliepoon
Senior Member
ek1025... congratulations on your church making Canadian Architect magazine. I've never been inside SCBC, so I didn't know that the interior was so interesting.
Link to article
THE LIGHT OF DAY
Project Scarborough Baptist Church, Scarborough, Ontario Architect Teeple Architects Inc.
Text David Steiner Photos Shai Gil
A Baptist community at the northeastern edge of Toronto required a new church: its membership, predominantly Chinese-Canadian, was growing, and it wanted more space to accommodate large services and education programs. It is largely an immigrant community living in an area of Toronto that has changed over the years from agricultural and industrial to suburban. It bustles despite the quiet neighbourhood façade--tract housing, light industrial warehouses, strip malls, a mega-mall catering to Chinese tastes, and the remnants of farming. Commercial parking lots are packed with cars, housing is expanding, and the main roads are often congested with traffic: all this while the sidewalks are empty of people.
With a piece of land purchased some years before, the church board set out to find an architect with no preconceived ideas for a new building. Members wanted a structure that would provide a large spiritual space with excellent acoustics, accommodate an ambitious educational program, and that would be delivered on a very tight budget. A committee of volunteers, many of whom are professionals in the construction industry, chose Teeple Architects from a crop of local firms.
Teeple Architects took these requirements and designed a building that sits in sharp contrast to its surroundings. A metal skin wraps the curved exterior walls and, unlike the majority of buildings in the area which are on full display behind strips of lawn, the church is set back from the busy main street, tucked behind an existing woodlot. Initial sketch models showed what the building would become--a large horizontal plane that swoops up into the vertical axis, addressing the client's request to differentiate the space for worship from everything else.
The journey from street to sanctuary is conventional: a circular driveway allows for dropoff at the front with a 532-car parking lot at the rear. This lot, hidden from a street pockmarked with parked cars, is one of the building's finest features. A crash berm, required by the railway that runs along the east edge of the site, is made of excavated soil and provides a visual boundary at the end of the lot. A row of mature cedar trees from the original farm has been preserved and long, wide swales will be planted with reeds and grasses to filter runoff from the asphalt. The parking lot is a comfortable, thoughtfully designed ancillary space that reverses the banality usually associated with this purpose.
The layout of the building is simple and straightforward. A large curved sanctuary, devoid of windows, rises at the front, displaying the single cross on the exterior. Two wide, double-height corridors cross each other, dividing the program pieces. Bridges, providing access to the upper sanctuary and offices, shoot over one corridor. At the front and back are large canopies that hang down at a precarious angle, signalling the main entries. Off to the west side is the education wing, which looks out at the woodlot through long, strip windows. Deep eaves emphasize the wing's low, horizontal lines and act as a horse blinder to focus the view on the trees beyond. Most unexpected is the gym. Seen from a window in a corridor above, it is sunken crater-like in the middle of the floor plate to mask its height from the exterior.
For a building this size, the budget was meagre. With a construction cost of $168 per square foot, it was critical to prioritize certain building elements. For example, the architects felt it was more important to use steel to provide a column-free, almond-shaped sanctuary with excellent acoustics, and a compound curved exterior rather than fine finishes. As such, gypsum wallboard has been used almost exclusively--giving many of the spaces a hollow, brittle feeling--while the floors are an unrelenting bare concrete finished with a grey epoxy finish. Still, Teeple Architects managed to insert a sense of dynamism in the circulation spaces and in the views from one level to another. From one spot on the second floor, a half-dozen interior windows line up to give the dramatic effect of visually piercing the entire building. Back-painted drywall valances, used periodically, infuse the light bouncing off them and provide a colourful glow. In spite of the cost constraints, the architects managed to significantly bring the project in under budget by almost a million dollars (although the contractor had serious problems finishing the job, causing an equivalent-sized headache with an almost year-long delay in completion).
Squat warehouses once comprised much of the local building stock. Nicholas Choy, a Toronto architect and member of the church's building committee who provided guidance during the building process, maintains that the industrial vernacular is being redeemed through the use of a common local material for a spiritual purpose. The building is a big and shiny object, largely hidden from view. Unlike many local churches of this size that squeeze the streetscape, the architects have used the existing site, in this case a woodlot, to meld the church into the neighbourhood. It sets a precedent in this area for public buildings of its kind: they can be both pragmatic and exuberant while not being so brash as to flaunt their appearance to passersby. In this pocket of the city, where density is quickly increasing, there is ample pressure to build in a hurry. Interestingly, this Baptist church provides an example for Toronto suburbs of how to make a dramatic building that is specific and sensitive to its site. By being so careful about siting, its relationship to the street and its visual appearance, the project gives credibility to the arbitrary quality of its neighbours and context. The church, as architecture, announces its intention of finding meaning on the site, while exploiting itself to create a building that is as exuberant as it is humane. CA
David Steiner is a freelance writer living in Ontario.
Link to article
THE LIGHT OF DAY
Project Scarborough Baptist Church, Scarborough, Ontario Architect Teeple Architects Inc.
Text David Steiner Photos Shai Gil
A Baptist community at the northeastern edge of Toronto required a new church: its membership, predominantly Chinese-Canadian, was growing, and it wanted more space to accommodate large services and education programs. It is largely an immigrant community living in an area of Toronto that has changed over the years from agricultural and industrial to suburban. It bustles despite the quiet neighbourhood façade--tract housing, light industrial warehouses, strip malls, a mega-mall catering to Chinese tastes, and the remnants of farming. Commercial parking lots are packed with cars, housing is expanding, and the main roads are often congested with traffic: all this while the sidewalks are empty of people.
With a piece of land purchased some years before, the church board set out to find an architect with no preconceived ideas for a new building. Members wanted a structure that would provide a large spiritual space with excellent acoustics, accommodate an ambitious educational program, and that would be delivered on a very tight budget. A committee of volunteers, many of whom are professionals in the construction industry, chose Teeple Architects from a crop of local firms.
Teeple Architects took these requirements and designed a building that sits in sharp contrast to its surroundings. A metal skin wraps the curved exterior walls and, unlike the majority of buildings in the area which are on full display behind strips of lawn, the church is set back from the busy main street, tucked behind an existing woodlot. Initial sketch models showed what the building would become--a large horizontal plane that swoops up into the vertical axis, addressing the client's request to differentiate the space for worship from everything else.
The journey from street to sanctuary is conventional: a circular driveway allows for dropoff at the front with a 532-car parking lot at the rear. This lot, hidden from a street pockmarked with parked cars, is one of the building's finest features. A crash berm, required by the railway that runs along the east edge of the site, is made of excavated soil and provides a visual boundary at the end of the lot. A row of mature cedar trees from the original farm has been preserved and long, wide swales will be planted with reeds and grasses to filter runoff from the asphalt. The parking lot is a comfortable, thoughtfully designed ancillary space that reverses the banality usually associated with this purpose.
The layout of the building is simple and straightforward. A large curved sanctuary, devoid of windows, rises at the front, displaying the single cross on the exterior. Two wide, double-height corridors cross each other, dividing the program pieces. Bridges, providing access to the upper sanctuary and offices, shoot over one corridor. At the front and back are large canopies that hang down at a precarious angle, signalling the main entries. Off to the west side is the education wing, which looks out at the woodlot through long, strip windows. Deep eaves emphasize the wing's low, horizontal lines and act as a horse blinder to focus the view on the trees beyond. Most unexpected is the gym. Seen from a window in a corridor above, it is sunken crater-like in the middle of the floor plate to mask its height from the exterior.
For a building this size, the budget was meagre. With a construction cost of $168 per square foot, it was critical to prioritize certain building elements. For example, the architects felt it was more important to use steel to provide a column-free, almond-shaped sanctuary with excellent acoustics, and a compound curved exterior rather than fine finishes. As such, gypsum wallboard has been used almost exclusively--giving many of the spaces a hollow, brittle feeling--while the floors are an unrelenting bare concrete finished with a grey epoxy finish. Still, Teeple Architects managed to insert a sense of dynamism in the circulation spaces and in the views from one level to another. From one spot on the second floor, a half-dozen interior windows line up to give the dramatic effect of visually piercing the entire building. Back-painted drywall valances, used periodically, infuse the light bouncing off them and provide a colourful glow. In spite of the cost constraints, the architects managed to significantly bring the project in under budget by almost a million dollars (although the contractor had serious problems finishing the job, causing an equivalent-sized headache with an almost year-long delay in completion).
Squat warehouses once comprised much of the local building stock. Nicholas Choy, a Toronto architect and member of the church's building committee who provided guidance during the building process, maintains that the industrial vernacular is being redeemed through the use of a common local material for a spiritual purpose. The building is a big and shiny object, largely hidden from view. Unlike many local churches of this size that squeeze the streetscape, the architects have used the existing site, in this case a woodlot, to meld the church into the neighbourhood. It sets a precedent in this area for public buildings of its kind: they can be both pragmatic and exuberant while not being so brash as to flaunt their appearance to passersby. In this pocket of the city, where density is quickly increasing, there is ample pressure to build in a hurry. Interestingly, this Baptist church provides an example for Toronto suburbs of how to make a dramatic building that is specific and sensitive to its site. By being so careful about siting, its relationship to the street and its visual appearance, the project gives credibility to the arbitrary quality of its neighbours and context. The church, as architecture, announces its intention of finding meaning on the site, while exploiting itself to create a building that is as exuberant as it is humane. CA
David Steiner is a freelance writer living in Ontario.
Dan416
Senior Member
I think the inside is actually really nice. The outside I'm not too fond of though, don't like aluminum siding.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Urban Shocker was on the right track...this is kinda Libeskind Lite.