St. Martha Catholic Church, Harvey

The new 12,000-sq.-ft. church for St. Martha's parish in Harvey was designed through a series of interactive, hands-on workshops with church leaders, building committee members, a liturgical consultant and the entire St. Martha congregation.

More than 200 members of the congregation participated in six workshops over a four-month period. The workshops resulted in the final worship configuration and allowed all members of the church to provide meaningful input into the ultimate building design.

The church, located at the center of the church property adjacent to a large grove of trees, activates the site by separating buildings, parking and open space, and engages the existing landscape to connect the church to nature. Future plans envision this grove as an expanded worship space with a meditation walk.

A unique feature of the design resulted from the need to satisfy stormwater retention on site in times of heavy rainfall. A design strategy was developed to make visible this programming need. An inverted roof acts as a collector for rainwater, sloping to a single location where an over-scaled scupper drops water into a collection pond.

This episodic event takes place directly behind the alter, where a large window allows the congregation to experience this intimate connection between sky and earth.

Celebrating both the church entry and its day chapel, a tower element anchors the project and acts as a campanile. Complementing this vertical element, the main worship space is more intimately scaled in keeping with the congregation's desire to connect the new worship space with specific qualities of the old.

Liturgical elements are carefully arranged to provide a close relationship with the priest, the congregation and the liturgy.

A layered planning organization relates the church front to the everyday in contrast to the rear as sacred. This duality is reinforced by the material qualities of the building. Brick masonry is used for gathering spaces at the church entry, which grounds the project to its earthly, physical site. Alternately, metal wall panels clad the worship space with a lighter, more ephemeral material.

The tower of the day chapel weaves both materials together in a symbolic knitting.