Photos by Steve Buettner
As published in Worship Facilities Magazine, Mar/Apr 2009
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North Springs Alliance Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., is a 400-seat church built on a challenging, yet highly visable, site. The Larson Group, Architects, a local firm, worked with a small budget to create a visual head-turner on the tight site. The multi-function church facility garnered The Larson Group a regional AIA award for design excellence.
"The primary assembly space was designed for worship, but configured with movable seating to be used for multiple function," says Bruce Smith, AIA director of The Larson Group, Architects.
A public walkway leads from the adjacent retail center into the heart of North Springs Alliance. A small plaza-like gathering area invites visitors and members to congregate outside or in.
Green design elements abound at North Springs Alliance. The vertical side walls of the facility were sculpted with large window recesses that help provide solar shading, while letting abundant natural light spill into the facility. Striking mountain views through the windows are an added bonus.
Jutting Out with Impact
North Springs Alliance Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., embodies the notion of making the most of what you’ve got. Its 400-seat, 15,600-square-foot facility rests on a sloping 6.1 acres of land―with Pike’s Peak for a backdrop.
“The site turned out to be a jewel, but it took some engineering,” says Vince Colarelli, president and CEO of local Colarelli Construction, the project’s general contractor. “Both the building and the site fall down a hillside. It’s built into a very tight site that’s unconventional.”
Unconventional, yet ideal for community outreach. And that’s something that North Springs Alliance’s Dean Edwards, chairman of the building committee, realized from the start. “The land is in a prime location, immediately adjacent to the largest mall in Colorado Springs, and located on a major thoroughfare.”
Starting Small
North Springs Alliance Church is part of a denomination originally founded as a missionary society focused on overseas missions, called The Christian & Missionary Alliance. And Edwards reports that the denomination’s focus abroad remains important today.
Yet in 1994, a group of five middle class working families, along with Pastor Doug Dry who was brought in from Connecticut, planted the church in Colorado Springs, and a following soon sprang up. “[We] worshipped in three different schools in our target ministry area [of northern Colorado Springs],” Edwards says of the time that led up to the purchase of a small corner lot next to a retail hub.
So the 350-member congregation found itself with a high visibility spot to call home, but a tough site to build on because of a steep land grade. Further complicating matters, money was tight. “Cost containment was clearly the overriding factor on the project,” Edwards says.
Then, the church made a practical, yet rarely chosen decision about how to most effectively handle the building project. “We took the approach that the pastor must not be in charge of the building process and not on the committee; his role was to preach and shepherd the flock,” explains Edwards. “He was certainly involved in the planning process, but when it came time to manage the design and construction of the building, it made sense for him to step back. However, it was my role [as building committee chair] to keep him fully informed and seek his input on any decisions substantive and/or strategic in nature.”
So with an atypical site, an uncommon approach, and several years of failed attempts to find the right architect partner, North Springs Alliance staff carefully chose a local architect with the ability to problem-solve.
Design Inspiration
“North Springs was not looking for a ‘plan out of a drawer,’” states Bruce Smith, AIA, director of The Larson Group, Architects.
Smith worked with the church’s six-person building committee and builder Colarelli to create a “community oasis” on the small corner lot. Where others may have seen headaches, according to Edwards, The Larson Group and Colarelli Construction saw solutions and presented a willingness to work as part of the North Springs Alliance team.
“The site … offered unsurpassed community exposure for the rooting of the church, and an ideal transition between the high commercial activity of the retail hub and the [nearby] established neighborhood,” Smith reports.
After studying many site schemes, the desire for connectivity to the community remained a guiding vision for the team, and the Phase I building was placed as close to the street corner as possible.
The jutting building form that took shape is comprised of a pre-engineered structural steel system, selected for economy. Yet, according to Colarelli, the approach works in more ways than one. “It’s one of my favorite buildings we’ve done because of the sculptural quality of its mass. It’s very recognizable and elegant in the way the mass is sculpted,” he says.
Smith describes the design elements that helped give North Springs Alliance its special edge as a noticeable community fixture. “[The pre-engineered structural steel system] typically associated [with] tapered steel frames were simply inverted to place the taper on the outer sides of the main frames. The inverse taper of the exterior walls also causes the building to have the appearance of springing forth from the ground,” he says.
“The idea of an oasis is reinforced with the positioning and shaping of the building, offering a sense of suddenness, particularly in the adjacency to a regional shopping mall’s parking [lot],” Smith adds. “It also has the wedge form which gives the appearance of being firmly driven into the very apparent uphill grade, and consequently giving a feeling of permanence.”
Inside, the facility was designed for multi-purpose flexibility, allowing the small church to deliver and host services, gatherings and events that may otherwise only be possible in a much larger space.
“The primary assembly space was designed for worship, but configured with movable seating to be used for multiple functions,” Smith describes. Within the worship space is a modular platform that can be configured differently for special events or moved altogether for recreation.
The facility also offers two support rooms that can function as a Green Room for dramas, as well as a prayer room and a counseling room where informal meetings can be held.
“Virtually every space in the building was configured for multiple uses,” Smith says. The entrance foyer area also achieves multi-use status, providing a spill over area for worship services that is complete with audio and video. Procurement and installation of audio-visual equipment in the foyer and all throughout the facility was handled by local CCS Presentation Systems.
Small North Springs Alliance also features a food prep area that can be closed off as a limited-use area or opened up to an adjacent room to serve as a kitchen for larger, more demanding events. The space can also morph into a coffeehouse next to the commons area.
A small plaza-like gathering area is also part of the design, and is integrated with a public walkway that leads into the building. A playground sits directly in front of the facility as well, helping to communicate the church’s priority on children and tying in with its future plans for a preschool to be held in the church’s education space.
For its efforts in designing North Springs Alliance Church, the Larson Group garnered a Southern Colorado American Institute of Architects (AIA) Design Merit Award for Built Architecture in 2007.
Elbow Grease & Firm Intent
Building the diminutive award winner proved to be a challenge in the harsh Colorado weather. Colarelli reports that the team struggled with both weather fronts and storm water conditions. Temporary construction measures, such as constructing a series of temporary storm water detention facilities cascading down the hillside, were put into place to reinforce the building efforts.
“Each time we thought we had it figured out, another storm event would take place. It took time to figure out how best to manage the site,” Colarelli states.
Another hurdle for the builder came from the material chosen to cover the metal building. The structure is partially covered in stucco—no small feat—but an important element that further enhances its dissimilarity to typical pre-engineered metal structures.
Colarelli explains that a metal structure must be “stiffened up” before stucco can be applied. And so the builder worked to achieve this necessary stiffening both within the metal building frame and in the field, through taking a different design approach to the structure’s foundation. “The metal building frame was supplemented with additional rigid framing,” he says. “You also have to detail the foundations so they’re supporting the frame in a balanced way.”
In all its efforts, the building team also considered how Colorado cold and heat would affect the structure once standing. Snow management was considered in two key areas—first, how to get it off the roof, and secondly, how to lessen its impact at the pedestrian level so attendees wouldn’t slip and fall.
“The church’s entrance faces to the South, so that helps,” Colarelli reports. “To the North would not be so good.” The roof, too, slopes correctly to help keep snow from piling up atop the structure. And for warmth inside, the building was over-insulated.
Another issue the team considered was how to deal with ultraviolet light. Since many churches gravitate toward really big windows as part of the overall design, extremely hot sun and bright light can be a tricky result in climates like Colorado’s.
“We had to use high-performance glass and protect that glass. We added tints to keep down ultraviolet damage,” Colarelli reports.
All throughout the design, the team’s goal of energy conservation is evident. “The tapered wall forms allow the window wall portions of the building to be sheltered under soffits,” Smith explains. “The vertical side walls were sculpted with large window recesses to allow for expanses of natural light and [mountain] view opportunities while maintaining solar shading.”
On the rooftop of North Springs Alliance, The Larson Group worked to design a system that would not call for multiple, unsightly HVAC units. Smith reports that all of the building’s mechanical services were consolidated into two large units clustered in a concealed, recessed area of the roof to keep the area clear of equipment and penetrations. In addition, he says, “one of the units was configured with variable air volume terminal units that … enable multiple heating/cooling zones with just one of the rooftop units.”
Inside, the small church uses both controlled dimming of the lights and solar roller shades over its expansive windows to further up the energy-saving ante.
Looking Forward
The angular landmark that resulted from the team’s work was achieved for a cost of $2.7 million. And it’s only the beginning. The facility is part of a cleverly crafted master plan for the 6.1-acre site.
Edwards says the main structure was designed and situated on the lot with expandability in two directions in mind. One expansion will double the Christian education space and expand the worship space another 50%. The other addition will provide a fellowship hall/gymnasium space about the size of a junior high basketball court.
Smith sums up the approach taken in Phase I and in future phases to follow: “The church is the people, not the building. But the building should be a reflection of who they are, and how their worship and ministry can best be accommodated.”