c3 THESIS GOALS

thesis goals (7/23/03)

My design goals involve investigating both church design and school design (K-12).

The study of the design of churches will be the most important aspect of my thesis since my building type is a place of worship. I plan to look at past and present floor plan layouts as well as elevation studies to achieve the goals that I have for my design.

Church complexes of medieval England, for example encompassed great site plans with many different structures. An image from Glyn Coppack’s Abbeys and Priories (1990) shows the Grove Priory which was excavated between 1973 and 1989 is to the right:

Examples of past church complexes show the complications of a multi-phase site, including old cobbled floors and roadways. They were essentially a community within themselves. This would be an interesting aspect to investigate – trying to provide such a facility in a modern-day urban location.

Other studies of present-day similar projects will be addressed in my program section Project Type Precedents. These include the Conference Center for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City,

Utah; the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Miami, Florida; the Gethsemane Episcopal Cathedral in Fargo, North Dakota; Centenary United Methodist Church is Lexington, Kentucky; and the Church of the Nativity in Rancho Sante Fe, California.

School design, specifically for church day-care/nursery and K-12 education will be researched extensively also, since I intend my complex to incorporate this feature in my design. I plan to investigate the specific city, state, and federal requirements for school facilities for the Detroit area. Other resources such as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Design Guidelines for High Performance Schools will be looked at and adapted into my specific design. Typical space requirements can be researched and found for all age groups of education. I will touch more on this subject in my Space Requirements section of Thesis Proposal Program.

Also, since my proposed site has abandoned buildings currently on it, I will plan to research what is involved with demolition costs and methods, and what city regulations might require.