Tabb’s students create chapel
designs for Serenbe community

Students in the spring 2009 Architecture Design V class at Texas A&M created designs for an interfaith chapel at Serenbe Community, an environmentally friendly residential development approximately 30 miles southwest of Atlanta.

“Students explored sacred site designs, the use of organizational field geometry, and developed an architectural program for the contemplative activities of the chapel,” said Phillip Tabb, professor of architecture, who serves as Serenbe’s master planner.

He said the course focused on the interplay between sacred design processes and form-making, and intuitive and objective design methods.

Students were asked to design a facility for a four-acre site, surrounded by trees on three sides, that would be used for ceremonial, healing and contemplative functions for the community.

Tabb asked the students to keep a daily journal as they designed the building with the following guidelines:

• Processional entrance path and sequence of spaces and onsite parking for 12 cars;
• Seasonal ceremonial outdoor space and/or garden;
• Entrance/transition space/office;
• Primary indoor ceremonial healing, and contemplative space(s);
• Rest room(s) and simple kitchen facilities; and
• Appropriate storage and mechanical space(s).

“The driving concept behind my design is the tree house,” said student Kelly Bonnell, who described her concept as a simple and pure form placed amidst the complexity of nature.

“The simple octagonal interior sanctuary is nestled within a steel webbing that is representative of the trees, or ‘complexity,’ surrounding the tree house,” she said. “The chapel also creates a contrast between the gravity of the earth and the levity of the heavens. The sanctuary hovers over a slope as it drops away, elevating the occupant into the midst of the forest and representing the levity of faith, while the secular spaces are buried in the earth, representing the gravity of the human realm.”

Bonnell’s design calls for the building to be off the electricity grid.

“The building is naturally cooled with movable windows and heated with geothermal energy,” she said. “Solar panels form an overhang to shade the underground portion of the building and provide electricity, and rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in a cistern that furnishes the toilet and sink.”

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- Posted: June 17, 2009 -