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Architects: Ford 3 Architects
- Area: 6400 ft²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:OM Media
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Manufacturers: Accoya, Connor Sports, Mecho Shades, National Glass and Metal Company, Porter, Revere, Whisper Walls
Text description provided by the architects. With a growing constituent staff, students, and residents, the Foundation sought a new space to commune its population for varied affairs-chief among them worship. Ford 3 developed a simple design with a flexible interior that puts focus on its surroundings with wraparound floor-to-ceiling gazing. Sited on a flat area between wetlands and existing roads of a larger campus, the design places the building’s utilities nearest to the main road and hides them under a planted grass mound with integrated outdoor amphitheater seating. This seating choice reflects the client’s modesty and creates privacy for the community center while remaining near and engaged with the remainder of the campus.
Close collaboration with structural and civil engineers, landscape architects, acousticians, lighting designers and various contractors enabled tidy integration between all the hidden functions and systems. Wall-to-wall maple plank athletic floor and wood-blade acoustic ceiling system provide warm natural wood tones that brighten an already bright daylit space. The ceiling plane, suspended on a perimeter array of thin pipe columns, angles up from the building’s core with upward tapering at the edges for a forced perspective that further opens the connection with the outdoors.
Exterior overhangs vary in depth to maximize northern diffuse daylight exposure and keep out harsher summer sun. The roof pitch invites the low-angle winter sun to permeate the space, casting deep, long shadows across the uniform floor. The wood-blade ceiling system hides a layer of acoustic foam over top of audio/visual equipment, mechanical equipment, and a retracting basketball hoop. Bespoke carriages and detailing allow the embedded systems to disappear almost seamlessly for undistracted group activities.
Meticulous flush detailing abounds throughout the space. Bluestone pavers extend from outside into the building’s vestibules, bathrooms, music room, and kitchenette. They then transition to maple plank for the main room. Hidden under flush-mounted grilles abutting the floor-to-ceiling windows, heating coils provide supplementary conditioning to the primary air-based systems. Beyond, the continuous visual extends out to a fescue meadow. Unlike other grasses, fescue lays over as it grows high, and here slumps to the floor plane, invoking the functions and sensation of a park pavilion or bandshell despite full enclosure.
