St Patricks Worship and Recreation Centre

The challenge was how to sensitively impose a substantial building on a mature elevated sylvan site and how to connect it to a beautiful stone nineteenth century Church. So that the new building might not detract from the Church it is set back behind the building line. Its mass is fragmented by means of short lengths of wall and disparate roofs, being the language of the Church. Essentially the new building makes reference to the Church by way of a similarly proportioned major volume expressed as a composed gable to the East together with a series of lesser spaces on either side, each with its own roof. The roofs are respectfully, conventionally orthogonal but they are supported at the gables on timber columns and trusses rather than masonry, thereby allowing the walls beneath to curve and skew to frame and allow ever changing views and light. The Church structural gridlines are extended through the new building and are expressed by the interplay of the timber columns and the stone buttresses. Apart from the roof of Blue Bangor slates other materials and finishes are deliberately different. The glazed link comprises grey aluminium curtain wall sections to transcend old and new.