Churches
Churches and worship construction
Church projects are decided by committee, funded by giving and built around a congregation that never stops meeting. The construction has to fit that, not the other way around.
Chapter 01
Sanctuary spans and sightlines
A sanctuary wants to be one room with nothing in the way, which puts the structure to work. Clear spans, where the roof structure carries across without interior columns, are what let everyone see the front. How far that span has to go is the first structural question on the job.
Sightlines and sound are decided together. A room shaped for a full congregation singing behaves differently from one shaped for a spoken meeting, and most churches need both. Settling what the room is primarily for makes the rest of the design straightforward.
First Christian Church in Hinton, Oklahoma, red brick with a tall white steeple
Steeple and portico structure
A steeple is structure, not trim. It has to be carried, it has to be weatherproof where it passes through the roof, and somebody has to be able to reach it later. Designing it into the frame from the start is far cheaper than adding it once the roof is on.
Porticos have the same character. A columned entrance is the part of the building people photograph, and it is also a place where roof, wall and ground all meet in a small area. It rewards being detailed properly.
Chapter 03
Additions onto a church that keeps meeting
Several of these projects were additions, including the First Baptist Church Addition in Weatherford. The hard work in an addition sits at the seam: joining roofs without creating somewhere for water to sit, tying new systems into old ones, and matching or deliberately contrasting with existing brick.
The sequence gets planned around what cannot stop. Sunday, the midweek pattern, the nursery, the office and any outside groups using the building all get written down as constraints before the phasing is drawn.
Sawatzky Construction has been building in western Oklahoma since 1954. Call the Weatherford office on (580) 772-5563.
Built and standing
5 of these, and you can go and look at them
First Christian Church
Hinton, OK
First Baptist Church
Weatherford, OK
First Baptist Church Addition
Weatherford, OK
First United Methodist Church
Cheyenne, OK
Church of Christ
Pauls Valley, OK
Talk it through with a construction manager
Tell us the building type, the town and roughly when you want to be in it. Somebody who runs jobs will call you back from the Weatherford office.