Detail of the project ed. 2024

urban-church-of-huax­i­ang / Switzerland

Design­er	Dr.-Ing. Dirk U. Moench
Loca­tion	7 Huax­i­ang Lane, 350001 Fuzhou City, Gulou Dis­trict, Fujian Province, China
Nation	Chi­na
Design Team	Com­pa­ny: INUCE • Dirk U. Moench Chief Archi­tect: Dr.-Ing. Dirk U. Moench
Year	2018
Pho­to credits	Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: SHIKAI

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

URBAN CHURCH of HUAXIANG
Chris­t­ian Pres­ence in the City Centre

BACK­GROUND: Since its con­struc­tion in 1938 the mis­sion church of Huax­i­ang was wit­ness to rad­i­cal urban trans­for­ma­tions. Today, the build­ing finds itself at the bot­tom of a maze of malls and office blocks. In need of addi­tion­al space, the con­gre­ga­tion decid­ed to build a sup­port­ing church adja­cent to the his­tor­i­cal site.

CHAL­LENGES: Against this back­drop, the com­mu­ni­ty was concerned:
• First­ly, it was unclear how a Chris­t­ian place of wor­ship could fit into a com­mer­cial­ized neigh­bour­hood of high and low, mod­ern and tra­di­tion­al buildings.
• Sec­ond­ly, there was dis­agree­ment regard­ing the empha­sis of the new church – what was its mis­sion? Some believ­ers stressed the sig­nif­i­cance of con­nect­ing with his­to­ry as a sym­bol of the congregation´s resilience against strug­gles past. Oth­ers hoped the project would attract young people.
• Pre­vi­ous pro­pos­als ranged from a Goth­ic cathe­dral to a Romanesque basil­i­ca – yet none of these seemed to align with the com­mu­ni­ty or the essence of the mod­ern city centre.

THE CHURCH AS URBAN COUN­TER­POINT: Our solu­tion was to move away from ide­al-types, instead envi­sion­ing the church as a city com­po­nent – an archi­tec­tur­al coun­ter­point that har­mo­nizes sur­round­ing dis­par­i­ties, whilst estab­lish­ing a dis­tinct pres­ence through the effec­tive use of colour and material.
• Fold­ings in the roof sur­face would organ­i­cal­ly extend the his­toric church´s pitched roof motif over the new struc­ture. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, two amphithe­atres would emerge, allow­ing the youth to per­form open-air services.
• For the facade we chose a gran­ite akin to that of the old church. Yet, we depart­ed from heavy blocks, choos­ing to fin­ish the exte­ri­or in a local peb­ble dash tech­nique. Break­ing down the gran­ite into grav­el and then debur­ring it, its brown hue would trans­form into a soft pink, infus­ing the new church with a youth­ful aura.
• Last­ly, the main sanc­tu­ary lay­out hon­ors the pref­er­ences of its Methodist con­gre­ga­tion, estab­lish­ing a link to its mis­sion­ary past: Despite its irreg­u­lar shape, Huax­i­ang has a rec­tan­gu­lar inte­ri­or, fac­ing a wide preach­ing plat­form backed by the city´s first church organ – an echo of the mod­el favored by Amer­i­can methodists. Addi­tion­al­ly, two small­er sanc­tu­ar­ies cater for the youth and the elder­ly. The com­bined capac­i­ty of all three venues is 2500 believers.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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