King of Glory Lutheran Church, Dallas, Texas
The King of Glory Lutheran Church is located on LBJ
freeway between Preston and Hillcrest. The building program seeks to double the
support and education spaces that currently exist and to expand the existing
sanctuary. Equally important, with the very visible location on LBJ freeway, is
the expression of the church’s relationship to the community. The current
architecture of the support facilities creates a “wall” that separates the
church from the community. This “wall” obscures the facade of the sanctuary and
confuses the reading of the building complex as a whole.
To solve this problem, we created a cylindrical open space in front of the
sanctuary. The relationship is similar to the Baptistries that are sited in
front of the great cathedrals of Europe. The cylinder allows support functions
to be located nearby, thus eliminating long corridors to classrooms. Part of the
cylinder is glass and opens out to LBJ freeway. This glass-enclosed public space
functions as a “town square” and centers the church in space and time within the
long tradition of civic town squares in which the church is the dominant
element. The public square tradition called for a central point that was a place
to meet, that created chance encounters, that restored relationships, and that
symbolized the workings of the kingdom of heaven on earth. This space functions
as a large “display case” for church events opening out to the freeway. The
passers-by see in and momentarily become participants in the activities of the
square.
Shopping malls have replaced the public square in modern times. The churches
provide the only true places for human interaction today, places where people
can share their deepest thoughts and fears, just as they used to in the public
squares. The circular glass Commons is a celebration of what the church is
today—a means of growing together spiritually but also as a human family.
A key feature of this glass cylinder is a circular ring that appears to float
high inside the cylinder. Another is a circle of stained glass windows, vestiges
of the old sanctuary, mounted in the ceiling. The tile floor is designed in a
star-shaped fractal pattern that repeats itself in any scale in which it is
examined. Just as the sanctuary is the center of worship, this great glass
cylinder is the center of the King of Glory community. It will show others what
they are about, and invite—indeed
welcome—them to join.