Detail of the project ed. 2024

christ-church-som­er­set-west / South Africa

Design­er	Michael Fran­cis Joseph Noero and Evan­dro Schwalbach
Loca­tion	Cnr. Helder­berg Col­lege & Old Stel­len­bosch Road, Som­er­set West, Cape Town, 7130
Nation	South Africa
Design Team	Jo Noero Evan­dro Schwalbach Joao da Silva Michael Hobbs
Year	2021
Pho­to credits	Exte­ri­or Photos: CCSW_Courtyard View_NoeroArchitects_David Southwood CCSW_Drone Top View_NoeroArchitects_Paris Brummer CCSW_Exterior Park­ing View 02_NoeroArchitects_Paris Brummer CCSW_Exterior Park­ing View 03_NoeroArchitects_Paris Brummer CCSW_Exterior Park­ing View_NoeroArchitects_Paris Brummer Inte­ri­or Photos: CCSW_Interior View 01_NoeroArchitects_David Southwood CCSW_Interior View 02_NoeroArchitects_David Southwood CCSW_Interior View 03_NoeroArchitects_David Southwood CCSW_Interior View 04_NoeroArchitects_Paris Brummer CCSW_Interior View 05_NoeroArchitects_Paris Brummer

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The church com­mu­ni­ty had out­grown their exist­ing church. We were for­tu­nate in hav­ing a priest who was edu­cat­ed as an archi­tect. Jo Noero had taught the min­is­ter Gavin Mil­lard at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Wit­wa­ter­srand in the 1980‘s before he made the deci­sion to enter the priest­hood. He was a top stu­dent who had a real pas­sion for archi­tec­ture. He made a fan­tas­tic client sym­pa­thet­ic to our ambi­tions of mak­ing a great church. A cir­cu­lar cen­tral­ized church form was select­ed because the cen­tral­i­ty of the space would encour­age and rein­force com­mu­ni­ty. The prece­dent that was used and accept­ed to demon­strate the geom­e­try of the cir­cle was St Paul‘s church which Noero Archi­tects com­plet­ed in Sowe­to for Arch­bish­op Desmond Tutu in 1985.
The first issue that was con­sid­ered was that of the dif­fer­ence between nece3ssity and lux­u­ry. The church was opposed to lux­u­ry in the sense that it was felt that what would be built should always reflect is mean­ing and use – this how­ev­er should not exclude the idea of find­ing a poet­ic way to express neces­si­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, mate­ri­als were care­ful­ly cho­sen to best reflect the pur­pose for which they were intend­ed to be used. All the steel work is expressed and gal­va­nized and left unpaint­ed. The main floor is con­crete and pol­ished to reveal the order of the aggre­gate mixed with the cement and sand. The exte­ri­or of the build­ing is rugged and is very clear in its form about the pur­pose of the build­ing. The exte­ri­or is paint­ed white as the Cape light is magnificent.
The inte­ri­or is embla­zoned by light from the cen­tral roof light which is shaped like a cross. Spa­tial­ly there are small­er spaces sur­round­ing the cylin­der. The sep­a­ra­tion of these two spaces into light and dark also rein­forces the sense of cen­tral­i­ty. Acoustics was also an impor­tant issue since sound in a cir­cu­lar space can be very dif­fi­cult to man­age. We designed a new inner skin of bricks which were laid in a par­tic­u­lar way to both cap­ture and deflect sound. This has worked won­der­ful­ly, and the space is a great per­for­mance space.
A green court between old and new which has become a third wor­ship space with the sky as the roof.
Christ Church offered the oppor­tu­ni­ty to knit the new church into an exist­ing con­ven­tion­al shop­ping cen­ter in a sub­ur­ban set­ting. By plac­ing the church in its new posi­tion new ways of think­ing about sub­ur­ban urban­ism were offered up.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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