Design II Project 3

Project 3

Non-Denominational Church

You have been selected to design a proposed non-denominational chapel located on the campus of SUNY Farmingdale. The College wants this to be a profoundly spiritual place that people of all faiths can worship and reflect on life’s events. The College believes this can be achieved by the creative use of light. The College has outlined a preliminary program that is listed below. A site has yet to selected on campus; the College is looking for guidance from the Architect. The building should be integrated into the fabric of the campus. The College explicitly requests the design not be symmetrical.

The first thing we were tasked to do, was to create 3 different models of light machines, in other words, experiment on a box on different ways to control light.

Contextual analysis:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mwxSnFv55I-GF6IMmxeIMFk3Alm8lxz00gEjVUk5--o/edit#slide=id.p

The church I was given to research was the Riola Parish Church in Italy. This is where i got some of my ideas from, loosely based off of.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1G3VrWjVm_ahu6euZkbBaMaw9-ljPft6Gu1FLirOBDnw/edit#slide=id.p

We were then instructed to make "Light Machines," this is one of mine:

:The whole point is to design windows that do not allow light to pass through and make direct contact with any walls or peoples eyes, this light machine would not work because you can take a straight line and pass it through and touch a wall.


My Ranking for the building goes as follows,
Ranking:
1 Main sanctuary
2 Meditation and Memorial

The sorting:
Meditation facing east so the meditation session can happen in the morning,
Main Sanctuary in the middle facing south so the main gathering can happen at all times of day, especially mid day
Memorial facing west so it occurs during the evening

This are the light direction in relations to each room:\

After, our next task was to design 3 different church layouts that are not symmetrical.

This is the design i chose to go with:
I chose this because based on our research on different buildings, rounded walls work best with controlling light, so a round building would theoretically control light the best.

Then it progressed into this:

After more changes, its final form takes this:

For my project i chose to edit and design off of the second design because from our research , light works best with curved walls.

This is the main light controlling function i chose to use, as light enters the space in the walls the curved columns will bounce the light around inside it allowing a smooth glow on the interior wall.

This is one of two light functions for the ceiling, there is a small gap between the wall and the ceiling to allow light on a downward sloping roof with side walls to prevent the sun from ever reaching the interior walls directly.

This is the second ceiling light function, each slat above allows light to pass through a small gap, and each slat has a wall that comes down below the previous gap to block light from entering directly.

This is my selected site plan because The Ellipse is formal area, and in my opinion, churches are formal structures. I also chose this site because it is in close proximity to the dorms, so students can go there any time of day and it be in a place of convenience.

These are the elevations.

Interior light controlling system:

This is my final 3D exterior view of the structure: