Saturday, February 23, 2013

MY THESIS: Eglise de Saint Therese de Lisieux || A Modern Parish Complex in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

Wow, I can't believe it's been 2 months since my last entry! I'm so sorry I left all of you, my readers, hanging in the air but I was busy closing the biggest and most important chapter of my college life: my thesis!




A very nervous me waiting for my jury to fix up before presenting. I had come an hour and a half early to practice my presentation, make sure everything was ready and all! See that pink bottle in the middle? I brought two liters of fluids to drink that morning: one filled with cold honey tea and another with water. That was the second liter, filled with water. Hehe

AND just so all of you know how hard architecture is: for thesis, you need to make a book (far right, maroon) full of all the research you have done on your project. All the reasons to why you designed your thesis that way should be there: from statistics to standards to even the actual land documents, even though the thesis itself will not be built. Then you need a logbook (spiral-bound, to the left of my research book) with all the consultation sheets that you completed with your adviser. Those three big spiral-bound booklets are my actual design solutions, which include the photos I will show you below plus other things. I had to print out three copies of that, one for each juror. And finally, you have an oral presentation to be done with a Powerpoint.



A special shoutout to my friend Jane Lim for being with me that morning and the night before! I'm so glad she slept over and stayed with me the whole time because I was so nervous and I really needed someone to be there for me. She helped me fix my PowerPoint presentation, pick out my clothes AND even did my french twist updo that morning. 

Now onto the actual thesis! Have you noticed that Bonifacio Global City, in all its developments does not have a church yet? Well, I decided to provide them with a church. 


My concept for the church structure is The Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo. From my research, less than 1/3 of the people who go to mass on Sundays or holy days of obligation go to daily mass. So to avoid the wasted space taking up all the airconditioning and energy, I decided to have an enclosed church with an amphitheater that people can hear mass on days when more seating is needed. The enclosed church can seat up to 550 people, and the amphitheater can seat 880 people and hear mass from there. The enclosed space symbolizes God, with the cantilevered roof as if He is reaching out to man, and the amphitheater symbolizes man just taking in all of His graces.



This is my aerial view of the whole structure! I have a function building to the left, which aside from galleries and function halls has the catechism school, the retreat facilities and a chapel. The annex in the middle is the parish office, and to the right is the Church Building of course.


 

My church building main worship areas are on the first floor, and all the meeting rooms, as well as the Priests' residences are on the first floor.
 


And here is the man's eye view, how it would look if you were standing in the lot across it, which is the Lexus Showroom.



The back view which shows the Priests' Private area.


Of course I couldn't resist, I made a wedding scenario during the day of my church interiors. My concept for my interiors is the Gospel of Jesus being Fisher of Man, so the coffered ceiling is like a net of Jesus which he has cast upon His followers, calling us to come back to Him and remember what is important.


A perspective of the nighttime mass, which shows how the church will be lit up at night. My design focus is natural lighting and ventilation, which is why I put an atrium behind the sanctuary and skylights on top.




A view of my amphitheater.


My Chapel, which will be used by retreatants.

I hope you all see the hard work I put into my thesis for a year and a half, because this is why I went on hiatus from blogging for so long! Well now I'm back, and hopefully I will be here to stay. 

I normally don't post at 2am, but because I'm so excited to show you all my thesis, I'm pressing send as soon as I finish typing this!

'Til the next post!





5 comments:

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  2. Christina LongoriaJune 13, 2013 at 2:46 PM

    Wow! Your thesis topic is just magnificient, Saira! It’s always hard to do thesis writing if you’re from an architecture degree as it is hard to explain some things that you can just show it off, right? Well, from the looks of it, you certainly did a great job with your thesis? What happened, anyway? Did you successfully defended it?

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  3. I just love your idea of having a some sort of flexible space! It's simply brilliant. Have you consulted priests for this thesis? They should consider looking at this kind of architecture. Good job! :D

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  4. Isn't there a good reason why BGC does not have a church? I mean, isn't the point of a "global" city is that it is open to all regardless of nationality, race or religion - and not everyone is a catholic.

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  5. HI! Nice renderings! What did you use?:)

    ReplyDelete