Detail of the project ed. 2020

INUCE • DIRK U. MOENCH – HUAX­I­ANG CHRIS­T­IAN CHURCH COM­MU­NI­TY CENTRE

Design­er Dirk U. Moench
Loca­tion Flower Lane Nr. 7, Gulou Dis­trict, Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China
Design Team

Project Archi­tect: Dirk U. Moench
Project Team: Joshua Cubero, Yuan­quan Gao, Sisi Zeng, Lv Shenming
Year 2019
Pho­to credits

All pho­tos cred­it­ed to “INUCE — SHIKAI”

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

HUAX­I­ANG CHRIS­T­IAN CEN­TRE – The Rise of China’s Urban Christians
Fuzhou, Chi­na, 2015 — 2018

A CHRIS­T­IAN MINOR­I­TY IN A TYP­I­CAL CHI­NESE CITY
Since its con­struc­tion in 1938 Huax­i­ang Church became wit­ness to rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions: From decades of dete­ri­o­ra­tion to unprece­dent­ed urban growth; from com­plete sup­pres­sion of reli­gion to a ten-fold growth in the num­ber of Chris­tians. Today, it finds itself in a maze of high-ris­es. In need for addi­tion­al space, its con­gre­ga­tion decid­ed to build a new church with com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre func­tions adja­cent to the old monument. 

IN EYE OF THE STORM
The con­di­tions imposed on the project were extra­or­di­nary: First­ly, the spa­tial require­ments con­flict­ed with the heritage-authority’s height and GFA restric­tions. Sec­ond­ly, the site’s iso­lat­ed char­ac­ter — enclosed by an uncom­mu­nica­tive set of build­ings high and low, mod­ern and tra­di­tion­al, East­ern and West­ern — demand­ed an inno­v­a­tive approach regard­ing the rela­tion­ship to the surrounding. 

EXPRESS­ING A COMMUNITY’S CHANGED SELF — PERCEPTION
Our design har­mo­nizes such imbal­ances by adopt­ing the role of a “medi­a­tor”: Sub­tly fold­ing its con­tours the vol­ume is visu­al­ly scaled down into frag­ments, allow­ing it to relate in pro­por­tion and sil­hou­ette to church and sur­round­ing, thus evok­ing the impres­sion of organ­i­cal­ly grown sky­lines. The façade is fin­ished in a tra­di­tion­al peb­ble-dash tech­nique — a coun­ter­state­ment to the cur­­tain-walls encir­cling it. The roofs are con­ceived as ele­vat­ed amphithe­atres for open-air ser­vices and have become pop­u­lar scenic spots also to the pub­lic, offer­ing unob­struct­ed views onto the old town. The com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre there­fore embod­ies a change in the congregation’s self-per­­cep­­tion, from a pro­tec­tive minor­i­ty that hid in seclu­sion, to a com­mu­ni­ty that now wants to reach out and invite to join.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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