(BDT_08_048) Korean Presbyterian Church

Description

Due to the varied origins of its inhabitants, the United States is home to many other Christian groups in addition to the two large churches. Consequently, sacred architecture in the U.S. is extremely varied. In one and the same metropolis, in Los Angeles for example, one can find a small storefront church alongside a huge cathedral. In the case of the Korean Presbyterian Church in New York City, however, it seems that a rare synthesis of both types, the small conversion and the large new building, has been achieved. Moreover, here it is the product of an architectural design process that, because of its radically digital production and topological rather than geometric approach, pushes forward the boundaries of spatial exploration in architecture.

The building is situated in Sunnyside, a residential neighbourhood in Queens on Long Island, in the southeast of the city of New York. A broad band, which previously served predominantly industrial functions in the eighties, runs through the grid of streets from west to east. The block to the north of 37th Avenue was occupied by Knickerbocker Laundry, its offices at the front and factory to the rear. Designed by Irving M. Fenichel and built in 1932, the laundry was an example of art deco architecture. In particular, the 61 metre long white concrete building on the south side with the main entrance and its symmetrical arrangement of three stumpy towers in the centre and corners has a monumentalism of the kind Lewis Mumford would have criticised as instilling “a false sense of continuity”.

In this case, however, conservation was not a central concern of the conversion from Knickerbocker Laundry to Presbyterian Church. The existing architecture was neither treated as a solitary icon nor as a palimpsest to inscribe. Such strategies for mediating between old and new do not feature in the architects’ approach. Their interest is not historical, but rather one of utility. The building is quite simply a suitable container, whose entrance can be relocated from the south to the west side and whose concrete exterior, covered in multi-coloured graffiti, can be given a new covering.

Surrounded by the asphalt of hundreds of parking spaces and equipped with an almost ceremonial stair, the three distinct parts of the complex are immediately visible, even before one enters through the glazed façade: the first part, the old office wing along a rail track; the second part, the new church hall over the old factory; the third part, a connecting piece with the stairs, ramps and corridors for accessing the other parts. Although the former laundry building is a concrete panel construction, the new spaces have a steel structural framework. For the walls and ceilings, low-cost building materials have been used such as sheet iron, cedar wood, plasterboard and plexiglass. The Knickerbocker Laundry building and the access buildings are painted black or clad in dark metal. The volume of the church, encased in vertical white metal profiles, arches upwards behind them, its roofscape reminiscent of the work of Alvar Aalto.

The space for the church itself rests on the two rear floors of the former laundry, the lower floor of which is used for workshops and classrooms, the upper floor at the west end as a wedding church seating up to 600 persons, and at the east end as a cafeteria catering for up to 800 persons. The Sunday church has a stage, main congregation space and galleries and can seat 2500 persons on grey wooden pews upholstered in red velour. The stage, which has been carpeted grey, is further emphasised by the musicians’ galleries that flank either side and the central arrangement of the organ. The arrangement of preacher and congregation facing one another is fixed. The slight angling of the side pews focuses attention on the pulpit and altar, as does the trail of small lights that run along the centre of the ceiling. The ceiling is broken into white ribs that grow lower towards the altar, although the ribs themselves run crosswise, penetrating the wall on the north side above the windows and continuing on beyond. Outside, the white ribs form six shell or shovel-like shades covering the external fire escape, from where one can see the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Their steel gridded structure is clad inside with redwood, externally with lead-coated sheet metal panels. From outside, the building suddenly appears like a scaly armadillo on spindly legs.

Squeezed between the former office wing and the church hall, a series of corridors, ramps and stairs have been inserted, divided into sections by changes in level. They form a system of tubes or hoses. At their ends these arteries project outwards to form a glass surface inscribed in white with the sign of the cross. This underlines their character still further: they serve not only as access routes, but also as a spatial system with a meaning of their own. The pattern of thin joins on the partly black, partly white epoxy terrazzo floor and the rows of plain neon lights on the otherwise bare ceiling highlight the turning and winding of the passageways.

The form of the Presbyterian Church is unimaginable without the mathematical method and digitalisation of the design process. With the triumph of topology over geometry in the late 20th century, it has become possible to create volumes whose forms, whether hard or soft, compressed or stretched, broken or distorted, defy conventional definitions, rules, ordering principles or geometrical description. These are volumes that one can only describe as “amorphous” or “fluid”, forms which can only be calculated using software from the automotive or film industries. The architects have used these to create “metablobs” for parts of the programme of the church. These bubbles have been grown on screen, morphed and shaped to form a constellation of forms with a single exterior skin. In a later stage, the Knickerbocker Laundry building was then integrated, the whole then subsequently aligned with the constraints of reality, with the restrictions of material, construction and budget. In the process, the “blob” has had to relinquish much of the original fluid appearance it had on screen.

The building in Sunnyside can be seen as a hybrid composite, an experimental “animate form” that mixes the monumental with the industrial, the dynamic with the fragmented – described by one journalist as an “alien novelty”. However, as a building for church services of a size comparable to that of the Catholic St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, the Presbyterian Church in Queens is not unusual for the USA. Gunnar Birkert’s Calvary Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan from 1977, and Philip Johnson’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California from 1980 are just two noteworthy examples of numerous precursors. Common to all of these is a certain theatrical drama. On experiencing the interior of the Korean Presbyterian Church, one commentator remarked on its resemblance to the glamour of the New York Radio City Music Hall. In this respect, it is no wonder that the architectural journal “Casabella” called the church an “architettura come spettacolo”.

Bibliography

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