For an architect, a historic church renovation might sound like a snooze of a commission amongst the more high-profile ongoing projects in town (like a new building for the country’s largest art museum campus or the library for North Carolina State’s technolopolis, Centennial Campus). But when Frank Harmon’s studio turns to such a project here, the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Raleigh, the results are quite impressive.
The church’s campus is a conglomeration of buildings that have accumulated over the last century. With Erin Sterling at the wheel, the studio has devised a scheme to thoughtfully remove pieces of the existing buildings and create a new 24,000 square foot Education Building as the project’s focal point. The existing parking lot, which divides the church like an alleyway, will contain a landscaped link that connects the two sides of the campus. These strategies will unify the church’s parts in order to establish a cohesive whole.
Unlike the majority of companies in the building industry who have recently jumped on the green bandwagon, Harmon has been making thoughtful and sustainable buildings for over 30 years. This particular project, like the forthcoming AIA Headquarters, utilizes many different environmentally responsible techniques.
The newly constructed Education Building will house classrooms, library, coffee barista, archives, common gathering space, atrium space, reception area, bathrooms, offices and a habitable green roof. Various other landscaping improvements are designed for the campus as well. The project embodies LEED principles in its design such as green roof, geothermal wells, rainwater collection, natural ventilation, daylighting and local materials.
-from project design statement
The new building will also bring natural light down through the center of the building, and looks to have shaded eastern and western facades to diffuse direct morning and afternoon sunlight. The street face of the new building will face Salisbury Street between Morgan and Hargett.
The project will be complete in 2012.
All images courtesy of Frank Harmon, Architect.
There is also another sustainably minded ecclesiastical building under construction in town. See the addition to Pullen Memorial Baptist Church by Dixon Weinstein.
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