Addition to Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

A Second Gem for Cox Avenue

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Simple. Confident. Sensitive. These are not words that typically come to mind when describing most architectural works. But the addition to Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, designed by local Carrboro studio Dixon Weinstein, speaks these sensibilities in a most unpretentious tone.

Architecture is at its finest when a building convinces you that it could not possibly exist at any other place in the world. This addition to a historic building melds the slope of the earth with new and redefined usable spaces. The lower story of the building addition cuddles up to the existing structure and acts to negotiate all of the elements of the project: a new chapel and fellowship hall, a roof garden, and a new entrance to the church. A courtyard space outside of the original sanctuary on the Cox Avenue side continues around to the rear of the building and becomes the vegetative roof of the new spaces. This exercise in placemaking yields an elegant transition that weaves the building and its surrounding landscape into a singular architecture.

The progressive mindset of this congregation is evident in the attention towards sustainability in this project. (The goal of the building is to be as energy efficient as possible.)

The addition employs adjacent existing walls, earth, solar orientation, green roofs and water recycling while making an array of diverse spaces for teaching, fellowship, missions and worship. The project seeks to reconcile numerous dualities in the church’s experience—its sharing of both urban and natural environments, its desire to nurture both individual and community spirituality, its measuring of precious financial resources against even more precious global resources.

The new space serves major program objectives—Fellowship and Missions. It also supports an expansive roof garden that restores nature to the site and raises significant outdoor congregating space up to the main level of the existing Sanctuary. The remaining parking lot doubles as the field for a network of geothermal wells to heat and cool the new space. A system of ramps and walks leads from the city sidewalk to the Terrace, built above the addition, and links a new Chapel on one side with the Sanctuary entry on the other. The Chapel, occupying a prominent place on the southeast corner, steps up to street to give the formerly inward-focused church building a new and fitting presence in the neighborhood.

- Dixon Weinstein Architects

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The jewel of this design is a new chapel element that is contemporary in its language and character. It respects the original architecture of the church by spatially and visually breaking away from the historic structure, and tying back through the one story portion. The result is a palpable contrast between old and new that allows each element to be perceived independently, simultaneously creating a unified composition.

The addition is currently under construction, and you can see the framing of the chapel piece from Hillsborough Street. The project won a North Carolina AIA Honor Award in its unbuilt form, the highest statewide recognition achievable. Those original award-winning drawings for the schematic design (below) were quite seductive in the rendition of the chapel element, which was arguably more rigorous in its contemporary expression than the final design. The predominantly horizontal chapel volume, with it’s monitor pop-top, gave way to a heavier, less simplified form with a pitched roof.

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This structure will join Harwell Hamilton Harris’ Cube on Cox (his home/studio and later the office of Buckminster Fuller-originated Synergetics) as significant architecture on this street. Pullen’s addition will be a fun one to watch because of the unconventionality of the design and the high visibility of the site. This project is a great example of how smart, careful planning can yield design excellence.

 

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Architecture , Other posts by Mark.