Charrette

If you need to get to the heart of a planning issue quickly, or involve a group that’s hard to get together for more than a short time, you might consider getting en la charrette.  The term comes from a 19th century practice of the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts).   When assignments were due, the school sent a carriage or cart (charrette) through the streets of Paris to gather finished projects from architecture students, some of whom climbed aboard and continued to draw as they rode.

Today, charrette describes a intensive design process of limited duration.  A typical exercise, usually led by your architect, has four main stages, which may be spread out over months, days or hours:

1. Research.  Gather information on the community, the organization, the site, and the building (if applicable) via interviews, maps, data and foundational documents.  For churches, it’s critical to include a clear presentation of the organizational purpose and mission.
2. Analysis.  Articulate (usually in guided group discussions)  the opportunities, needs, resources and limitations apparent from the research and that follow from the church’s ministry objectives.
3. Synthesis.  Explore alternate plans that answer and fit the criteria that were identified in previous stages.
4. Feedback.  Share your ideas with appropriate groups to find a preferred plan.  Repeat stages 3 and 4 as required.

A charrette is an attractive option for churches.  It doesn’t require ongoing commitment from a large group.  (Need another committee in your future?.)  At it’s heart is the ability of a charrette to turn a sometimes incomprehensible process into an event.  Less time may equal fewer dollars spent on preliminary design.

Of course, no mechanism is perfect.  The charrette requires leaders to offer a level of guidance that matches the church’s polity and trust the crowd.  And no matter how successful the effort is, there is always more work necessary to bring it to fruition.  The upside, though, is that broad participation in the planning process greatly increases the potential for “buy-in” when it’s time to roll.

Is Your Church an Energy Star?

Even if you’re skeptical about climate change, you should be still interested in moving dollars from air conditioning to outreach.  And if you’re put off by the tendency of some environmental efforts toward moralization, you may find the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program worth a look.

EPA started the Energy Star program in 1992 to reduce energy consumption and power plant emissions.  It has since evolved into a far-reaching effort to provide information and guidance to anyone interested in reducing energy use and costs.

The Agency began by offering guidelines for homes and businesses and guidelines for ministry organizations - Energy Star for Congregations – appeared in 2007.  The guides compare actual energy use to conventional usage for each building type and designate those that beat do well (75 on a scale of 1-100) as Energy Stars.

Just this summer, the Agency released a free web-based tool – Performance Ratings for Houses of Worship - to help church leaders “assess the energy performance of their buildings; make more informed budgetary, investment and management decisions; and help Energy Star participants publicize their energy efficiency achievements.”  The tool is based on several specific characteristics shown to drive energy use:

• Number of seats in the worship area
• Number of days the building is open for use
• Weekly operating hours
• Number of personal computers
• Presence of a commercial food preparation area
• Number of commercial refrigerators, and
• Weather

Jerry Lawson, national manager of Energy Star’s Small Business and Congregations Network pointed out in an article for Worship Facilitites Magazine that the new Ratings apply to buildings whose primary function is as a place of worship – churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, meetinghouses – and not to other buildings that may be associated with a religious organization, such as living quarters, schools, homes, or buildings used primarily for other community activities. (It also applies only to worship facilities that have 4,000 permanent seats or less.)  Characteristics and usage unique to worship spaces are accounted for by comparing them only to other such facilities.

To help you get started, the Agency offers benchmarking data, webinars and other information at www.energystar.gov and at (888) 782-7937.

McDonald’s is Missing

I take my caffeine cold.  So when a coworker and I needed help staying alert on a long road trip, we stopped at a McDonald’s for some Atlanta wine.

I haven’t thought much about whether the chain’s current rebranding effort gives them a serious shot at Starbucks, but I was interested to see one aspect of the McCafe experiment I hadn’t expected: the word “McDonald’s” had been almost completely scrubbed away.  Take a look:

It was nearly impossible to find the old logotype anywhere on the premises.  The only exceptions were an old news stand and the highway sign (see below).  The next closest remnant was the “Mickey D’s Ice Tea” dispenser.  Only the Golden Arches reminded us of the building’s sacred heritage.

There was no doubt of course, where we were. Even behind a “Play Place,” familiar shapes and colors gave it away, and I wonder if an American could possible mistake the place for something called a McCafe.

But in the few places on the planet not yet familiar with the place, I wondered what assumptions they might make. Would they wonder about the apparent rear-end collision between the hipped roof and Play Place box? Would they care about the history of the color scheme and arches? Probably not. But for USAmericans, it will be a long time before this particular architecture is anything but a McDonald’s. How long will that take?

Translate the same questions to church buildings. St. Francis of Assisi is routinely misquoted as saying something along the lines of, “Preach the Gospel and if necessary, use words,” and some buildings will always communicate their purpose, with or without signage. Others will never communicate “church” to our culture, no matter how many crosses they stick up. Does it matter to you?

How dependent is your organization on labels and symbols to communicate its purpose? How much of this load is carried by the building you inhabit? Do your facilities present an obstacle to the effective communication of your most important messages?

Church Parking Solutions

My parents live in a city that is a tourist mecca, and their downtown church struggles to offer parking for people who want to attend worship on Sunday mornings.  Left unattended, the hard-to-come-by parking spaces will fill up with cars from all over the country driven by people more interested in souvenir t-shirts than spiritual matters.  The last time I visited, a tram full of tourists had to wait as I helped my father across the street.  The church has resorted to a combination of parking stickers that identify members, parking lot attendants and a sign that spells out their towing policy.

More recently, one of my pastors got a call from someone who tried to visit, but gave up after finding that all of the handicapped spaces were full.  We suspect that some were filled by senior adults stretching the definition of “handicapped,” but weren’t quite sure how to address it gracefully.  Tongue-in-cheek, we kicked around ideas like slashing tires and spray-painting threatening messages on windshields (softened, of course, by leaving tracts on windshields).  Practically, we wondered if a message like, “Thank you for coming; please remember to prominently display your handicapped parking permit so that we can honor our guests with special needs” would do the trick.

Enter the “parking solutions” catalog I received in the mail today.  It offers 30 pages of products designed to help churches control problem parking.  They range from signs that read “Thou Shalt Not Park Here” to bright red stickers, designed to be pasted onto the offenders window, that say, “VIOLATION | THIS VEHICLE IS PARKED ILLEGALLY AND IS SUBJECT TO TOWING AND IMPOUNDMENT | YOUR LICENSE NUMBER WAS RECORDED”.   The 5 x 8 stickers are available with “strong adhesive when you want them removed only with a scraper or with mild adhesive for easier removal.”  (I assume you check “Prophet” or “Grace” when you place your order.)

I didn’t find any WWJP bracelets.

I understand from personal experience the difficulty that thoughtless drivers cause for others, and the desire to make them “do right.”  I prefer to see churches use attendants instead of signs.  Like email, a sign, no matter how graciously worded, lacks the nuance that a smiling face can bring to challenging words.

Misplaced Sign

My friend Ramon Presson was at a church-based conference last week when he spotted this sign on the Men’s Room door.  Location, location, location.

Orthodoxy on Rails

Earlier this year, the site English Russia, which bills itself as “The Eastern Entertainment Channel” told us that “there is a widespread train in Russia to organize Orthodox-Christian churches in old railway cars.  The images are intriguing both because they reveal how old the practice is, and because how closely the old cars resemble traditional worship settings: Airstream Byzantine.  See the whole article.

Retail Gets Saved

Two hundred fifty Circuit City stores have gone dark.

And with the economy in its current state, commercial landlords aren’t that picky.  According to an article by Mary Shanklin in the Orlando Sentinel, the situation presents an opportunity for Sunday-only churches that, in boom times, weren’t sought after as tenants.

Churches are now the darlings of shopping-center landlords.

Vacancy rates are high enough that alternative tenants such as churches and medical clinics are more attractive than they once were.

If it’s breathing, it’s looking good now.

Church as Retail Space

Had your fill of retail boxes turned into worship space?  Take a look at the flip side: a former Dominican church in Maastricht, the Netherlands, featured at Dezeen a couple of years ago and republished today in a survey of great retail spaces. Dutch architects Merkx + Girod won the Lensvelt de Architect Interior Prize for converting it for use as a bookstore in 2007.   Be sure to read the online comments for debate on the appropriateness of the “repurposing”.

Construction On Sale

Edifice Inc. a contractor in Charlotte, NC, is running a direct mail campaign (and pressing the point in person) that right now, construction is on sale.  Some public projects are coming in at record low prices, largely because contractors and their subs are offering what seem to be ridiculous proposals just to keep their people working..

It seems that some commercial clients are figuring this out, and are no longer frozen by fear.  They’re crunching the numbers, looking for and finding financing (though with more demanding terms) and moving ahead with projects that went dormant at the end of 2008.

Churches seem to be moving a little slower, despite forecasts that the “religious sector” of the construction market may lead all other sectors in recovery.

Admittedly, architects tend to encounter the churches with the happiest stories to tell: they are growing and typically doing well.   But even in these churches, pastors are keenly aware that at some percentage of their congregations has been affected by the economic downturn. Some conclude that it would be or seem insensitive.  ”Not the right time to ask,” said one pastor, right before he left to lead a membership class for 26 new families.  Others wonder if it’s right to build on the desperation of a beleaguered construction industry.

I can’t find any fault with these sentiments.

The cost of waiting, though, is that most will feel confident enough to move forward about the same time everyone else does.  Prices will climb, provoked by competition for limited resources, and dollars saved won’t go nearly as far.

Grace always has a cost.

Church Security Gets a Closer Look

A 54-year-old security association announced today that it is taking a closer look at the security needs of houses of worship and faith-based organizations.  The “world’s largest organization for security professionals,” the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS), has formed the Faith-Based Organization Security Committee in response to incidents of violence and other crimes against ministries of all stripes.

In 2009, the Christian Security Network, an organization allied with ASIS, documented nearly 500 such incidents in 42 states.  According to the report, burglary accounted for 64 percent of the crimes, and arson and general theft, at second and third, accounted for 13 percent and 7 percent respectively.

The Committee will identify the major risks that these groups face – including violent crimes, arson and internal theft – and develop standards and guidelines to combat them. One of the first projects of the committee is a resource guide for houses of worship and other faith-based organizations. The guide will provide insight and instruction for developing safety teams, assessing risks, identifying potential dangers and protecting high-profile religious leaders.