Detail of the project ed. 2016

church-of-seed / O Stu­dio Architects

Design­er  Fai Au
Loca­tion  HUIZHOU, CHINA
Design Team  

FAI AU, CHEN YONG, SI MEI YANG,
Year  2010
Pho­to credits  

Iwan Baan

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Church of Seed is locat­ed at Luo­fu Moun­tain Scenery Dis­trict — one of the sev­en famous Taoist Moun­tains in Chi­na. Although there are var­i­ous kinds of Taoist and Bud­dhist tem­ples in this dis­trict, west­ern reli­gious ele­ment has not yet been found. Besides devel­op­ing pri­vate hous­es, the client in this project intends to devel­op a small church for the sur­round­ing vil­lage peo­ple in order to widen the spec­trum of reli­gious cul­ture. This church pro­vides not only wor­ship and med­i­ta­tion space for Chris­tians, but also recre­ation­al and gath­er­ing places for the sur­round­ing vil­lage peo­ple. Instead of pro­mot­ing Chris­t­ian reli­gion active­ly and aggres­sive­ly, the mes­sage of reli­gion is com­mu­ni­cat­ed sub­tly through the play of light and shad­ow in this architecture.

Sit­u­at­ed with­in the beau­ti­ful land­scape of Luo­fu Moun­tain, Church of Seed has an area of 280 m² and can accom­mo­date 60 peo­ple. The design con­cept is trig­gered by the form of a seed — a famous metaphor­i­cal ele­ment in the Gospel sto­ries. A curve line fol­lows the out­line of a seed and marks the enclos­ing wall ele­ment. The curve is then split into three parts, and three entries are formed at where the curve wall splits: the south east fac­ing wall has a cross shape open­ing which intro­duces morn­ing sun into the inte­ri­or; the west fac­ing wall is sol­id and block­ing the after­noon sun; the north fac­ing wall is thick­en to accom­mo­date toi­let facil­i­ty. The step­ping roof ter­race allows dif­fuse north­ern day­light into the inte­ri­or and pro­vides a dra­mat­ic head­room incre­ment (3 – 12 meters) from the main entrance towards the wor­ship­ing space. Vis­i­tors can walk up to the step­ping roof ter­race, arrive at the obser­va­tion deck and enjoy the dis­tant view of moun­tain and water.

Church of Seed has a raw, nat­ur­al and non-dec­o­ra­­tive mate­r­i­al lan­guage. The main struc­ture is con­struct­ed by in-situ con­crete with bam­boo form­works. In-situ con­crete con­struc­tion is eco­nom­i­cal­ly sound and prac­ti­cal for local builders. The bam­boo tex­ture left on the concret

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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