Congratulations.. it looks great. The only criticism I have is of the wood on the main doorway.. the colour kinda doesnt go with everything else. Also, the interior of the chapel looks a bit crowded coz of the truss work.. but that's probably the angle of the photograph, isnt it..

On the whole, it looks great, and I'm happy for u.

Thanks....

The main doorway was picked out of a cataloge... I would have preferred some nice-looking glass doors, but I was overruled on that one. (I was also pushing for a Pilkington-style structural glazing system for the exterior glass, but cost considerations favored a Kawneer curtain wall instead.)

As for the chapel, it's probably the angle of the photo... I didn't find it particularly crowded when I was visited. It also doesn't help that my digital camera does horribly in low-light situations, and I couldn't find the light switches for the chapel.

i really like how the angle of entrance is angled up ... and the materials on the outside are quite nice .. however, i would have to agree that the wood is a bit too much .. i think the wood door has no relation to the aesthetic of the outside .. and the interior wood trusses would be quite nice, but i think they are way too heavy .. just overbearing for the space inside .... but overall, nice job. im sure its very satisfying to look at your 1st built piece. congrats!

Here's a dirty little secret about the wood trusses: They're purely decorative, with no structural function whatsoever. They were originally designed to be structural, but our engineer insisted on using a steel frame for the building. However, the monastic community liked the trusses, so they stayed.

(There's also similar wood trusses at the top of the atrium space, but I don't have photos of that. It's a much larger space than the chapel, so they probably fit much better.)

Nice! Yeah, that is a dirty little secret. Looks really nice, though.

I really like the exposed trusses behind the clean facade system. Sure the door stands out a bit, but it definitely doesn't kill the project. After all, it appears to be in a strict architectural setting.

Structural Bah!!

They express the constructive spirit of our age!!
You just keep on rocking out with your bad self there Living In Gin and leave the petty quibbling to smaller minds.

I mean, if the monks like it... hay.

What I think is funny is what is happening in the stairwell at the far right of this image:



Th proximity of the crucifix to the fire door/exit sign is hilarious. And that is totally not a criticism; it makes me laugh because I have had so many similar juxtapositions happen on church projects I have done!

And people wonder why historic churches seem to have a greater sense of other-worldly spirituality than so many contemporary ones...It is really, really difficult to inspire trancendance when one is looking at an exit sign and panic hardware.

It looks like a cool and fun project LIG, thanks for posting it! The doors and (ridiculous) entry light fixture are the main problems I see too. Who on earth thought a big sconce smack in the middle of that fascia was a good idea? Quite an accomplishment for what started as a drafting job. I think you'll have no problem getting into a grad program (re: other thread).

That crucifix is actually on the first floor of a fire stair, so it's not really in a worship space per se.

The chapel itself has another fire exit with the requisite signage and panic hardware, but it's discreetly tucked around a corner and not directly visible from the main space.

I just may have to Photoshop that light fixture out of those photos before I add them to my portfolio... Or sneak up to the monastery one night with a ladder and tools, and remove the damn thing myself. Arrgh!

You guys laugh now but I can just see the news item now “… we crawled through the smoke, coughing and gasping for air. I was going to give up and let the flames take me when, there in, shining in the light of the emergency strobe thing, like a beacon of hope... our lord guiding us to safety” Its called practical religion man.

Seriously, it’s a cool project. Especially given the constraints you were under. You should convince some frat boys from their rival school that the light sconce is their mascot or some sacred good luck totem that they made you put there because the football team can win without it. Then maybe they’ll come over and steal it.

LOL newstreamline.

LIG, don't risk the vandalism rap - use photoshop! It is definitely a portfolio-worthy project !!

i rather like the lamp, and the jesus in the firestair too. very real. very strange. very funny.

not so into the fake structure, but hey why not?

my first professional UNBUILT project was a church for a slightly odd budhist-y sect over here. they hired IM PEI to do a quite nice gallery in the forest a year or two earlier so i thought they might like an architectural work of art. they didn't; in fact they hated my design so much (because it wasn't a box) our office was fired. Oddly enough my boss didn't care, thinking the design was worth pushing, and a box not worth his time (there was more to to it than that of course but will spare you the tale).

i believe they hired a contractor to do the job in the end, foregoing willful architects altogether..gotta love it... ;-)

sometimes it is very hard to take on all the ideas a client wants and make sense of them. in your case the lamps and doors and jesus stair i think add a quirky character to the project that otherwise would have been straightforward and predictable. so maybe they are hapy accidents...odd, but happy.

anyhoo, i agree with lb. you did very well to parlay a drafting job into a real building. well done.

1sr reactions.
what a bare area outside. and the rail leading from the drive seems pointless.

the fixture over the door is mondo dorky. a painted (same color) psuedorecessed strip would have been ok. Or sneak up to the monastery one night with a ladder and tools, and remove the damn thing myself.
tp it with dayglo papertowels

other than the color difference, the doors aren't too bad. the 45 degree dividers semimatch the 45s in the taller bldg behind. (the bldg with that mentioned crucifix and firesign)


is that sliver of gray a flue? it doesn't look like it:

but this area has a decent view of outdoors

[i]you did very well to parlay a drafting job into a real building. [i/]
emphatic agreement :-)

I agree about the light fixture... I may have to pull a Howard Roark on that thing someday. In retrospect, I think the roof above the entry should have been extended a little further out over the sidewalk, and a simple recessed downlight or two would have given adequate light to the entrance without becoming an ugly focal point.

The sliver of gray is a fin wall that intersects the chapel roof... At one point the monastic order's logo was to have been carved in the stone above the roof, but I didn't notice it when I was there. It must have been VE'ed out.

As for the bareness of the outside, there was supposed to have been some landscaping around the chapel so that it didn't feel quite so much like praying in a fishowl, but that idea seems to have been nixed as well.

Oh, and the railing is probably a response to the fact that many of the brothers in the monastery are very elderly, and might need the help of a railing to get from a car to the door. In fact, there's an assisted-living facility in the second floor of the building for the monks who are very elderly and/or disabled.

Asside from the wooden door - which quite frankly you should have really fought more to be current (frameless & glazed perhaps); and the heavy lined roof - I really like this little project. And the level of detail is very good for a first built. Impressed LIG

I want a first built project too :(

congrats, LG. Overall very pleasant. I enjoy the clean lines of the roof planes and fascias and the pulled-back floor plates in the main building. A couple things that I'm not so keen on:
--the new structure looks a bit like it is rammed into the existing building on both sides. This is unfortunately emphasized by the mismatched elevations over where the windows are on the small section of new wall that returns to the main building on the right. Why did the windows end up like that? The transition is jarring. They definitely look better in the very last shot, from across the field, where it looks like they match a bit better in elevation. Not that I'm saying new has to be matched with old--in this case however the area looks unresolved, as if rather than specifically making a departure from the old, or specifically matching it, instead it sort of ends up in the middle. Another thing that doesn't help this impression is the similar-but-not-quite-the-same-but-not-quite-different stone cladding material.

The new building itself is pleasant, it's just that transition that really gets to me. Perhaps it is just something I am overly sensitive to as I deal with renovation work all day long. I also find the timbers possibly oversized, although it is very hard to tell without being there; from the pictures I am worried that the space might possibly feel like this enormously heavy roof structure is going to fall on your head! (Perhaps this is the inspiration for prayer? ;) ) I am claustrophobic, however, so I'm pretty upset by feeling squeezed in any way. The fact that they are fake trusses is actually what annoys me--I'm not a structural expressivist or anything, but, if they're going to be fake, then it makes me think, well, they could be resolved a bit better. (The part where they meet that rising CMU wall at an odd, seemingly random, point bugs me.)

Can you tell me the justifications for these things? I'm happy to be proved wrong!

Also, that is a priceless feeling to see something you've drawn become real. Congrats! I wouldn't offer a few criticisms except that you seem so pleasant and open to receiving them and discussing them. Someday I'll post something and let you criticize it in return, I promise.

Thanks for your comments...

Some background: The whole project stems from the fact that the monastery is composed of two wings, a 3-story wing built in 1918 (to the right in the exterior photos), and a 4-story wing built in 1930 (to the left in the exterior photos). The floor plates of the two wings don't match up anywhere, and the purpose of our addition was to provide an ADA-compliant circulation path between the two via the use of a double-ended elevator.

The ground floor of the new addition matches the ground floor of the 1918 wing, while the upper three floors of the addition match the floors of the 1930 wing. And as if that issn't complicated enough, the mis-matched windows you refer to occur at the landings of the fire stair (mentioned above) in the addition. I see your point about how the windows are a little jarring, though... If I had to design it all over again, I would consider scrapping the punched stairway windows altogether, and perhaps using some sort of narrow vertical ribbon window right where the addition meets the old building. Oh well... 20/20 hindsight and all that.

As for the exterior stone, it's actually from the same quarry as the stone used on the original buildings (as well as that used throughout the Villanova campus)... It only looks different because it hasn't yet been exposed to 80+ years of Philadelphia weather. Hopefully the difference will become less apparent as time goes on. I was also hoping for a copper fascia that would weather nicely, but budget considerations favored painted aluminum. :(

If I remember correctly, the trusses are made of 8" X 8" members... Perhaps 6" X 6" members would have been more appropriate for the space. It also doesn't help that enormous butt-ugly speakers were mounted to the center truss in the chapel, which clutters the ceiling a great deal. Given the size of those speakers, you'd think they were planning to have a Rolling Stones concert in that chapel. Recessed speakers in the ceiling should have been more than adequate.

I think our engineers were more used to working on utilatarian / light industrial projects, and weren't used to dealing with aesthetic considerations. One photo shows a return grille smack in the middle of a prominent stone wall inside the chapel that would have been a perfect place for some artwork, and the HVAC system is so loud you can barely hear yourself think when it's running. Also, the reason the roof is so thick is because it contains the structural steel, which would have been avoided by utilizing the trusses for their intended purpose... In my early drawings, the roof system was only about half as thick. But unfortunately, I wasn't really in a position to insist on very much when it came to the engineering aspects of the project, and the project principal was inclined to let the engineers have their way over my objections.

As for where the one truss intersects the curved wall, I guess it doesn't bother me as much... The wall could have been made lower, but it conceals some ugly HVAC ductwork on the other side. Perhaps the intersection itself could have been detailed better, maybe with a 1/2" reveal in the stone around the truss member.

Again, if I had to do it all over, I would make better use of 3D rendering software to visualize some of these issues, but I wasn't as well-versed in 3D modelling then as I am now, and I was working for a firm that didn't routinely use such tools. 20/20 hindsight again, though.

Thanks again for your comments... They've given me things to keep in mind on future projects.