The regular congregation is accomodated in the interior Sanctuary. Three or four times a year there is a "Revival Meeting." Attracting much larger crowds, these meetings are accomodated under a tent on the grass parking lot. There is an outside elevated pulpit at the bend in the main wall for these gatherings.

Musings

A couple times I've been asked, "So, what's your design philosophy? What are you trying to do or express?" Both times I've been just tongue-tied, caught completely unprepared.

Many more times I've been asked, "What style do you do?" Once in a while I've felt like this was the same question. More often I think it's a different question. One that reveals a conception of design as something essentially cosmetic, something applied. In these cases, it's a question I couldn't really answer, prepared or not.

But the first question is a good one. One that deserves an answer. This is my attempt:

I really like the metaphor of buildings as organisms. It is a wonderfully rich, almost bottomless metaphor. Buildings are a phylum unto themselves. They have skeletons and skins, digestive system, circulatory systems. They are air-breathers, inhaling and exhaling. They have muscles and a nervous system. They're warm-blooded; they metabolize. In the brief span of my career they have made an evolutionary leap of fantastic proportions: they have sprouted brains!

The principal challenge of the designer is to configure buildings to fit organically into their environment.

Organic fit. It's a very elusive thing that does not surrender easily to language. It's something more felt than apprehended. It's found in the natural rooting to the site. It's in the responsiveness to the wind and sun and rain and view. It's in the natural spatial order of its body and limbs and organs. It's in its natural scale. It's in its directness and simplicity. It's in the felt sense that the whole is somehow vastly more than the sum of its parts, just like any other organism.

That's what I try to achieve in the buildings I design.