Misc: Bethel Baptist Church, Koramangala
Physical Object by Mathew and Ghosh Architects (MGAPL) and Saumitro Ghosh, Principle Architect
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© MGAPL.
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Notions of the neighborhood are undefined around the site and amorphous in the adhoc growth of Bangalore, India. As largely characterless entities, the public perception of the neighborhood is limited and seen only as proximities and distances to trivia.
The opportunity to build a quasi-public institution in such a neighborhood is the opportunity to design an event that can suggest a restructuring of public perception of their urban space.
This local church primarily presents itself as a self-contained form, whose street facades seem to reconstruct the cuboid. On the street, juxtaposed against this form is the plinth of negotiations-the street platform. This is not a street deck (where one is the spectator) but a place of dialogue, shorn of boundary walls. This space stretches from the outside to the atrium on the inside.
Other than this gesture, the building does not make any direct references to its immediate context, preferring instead to establish a more abstract configuration.
- The sanctuary is lifted off the street level and its sloping slab sits on exposed concrete columns. The lower space opens up completely as pivoted door fins onto the two street sides. Movement up to the sanctuary is a slow and discontinuous movement defined by the irregular steps of the street platform. As one turns to the main door, one is on axis with the last flight of steps leading to the sanctuary. Now, what was perceived as a cuboid on the outside transforms into a series of shifting planes (a solid form sculpted from the inside), which together with the gently stepped floor leads to the space of the altar. The plane breaks down in scale at the altar. The planes get a mild wash of light from full-length openings on its sides.
- The floor plane which steps down towards altar is a mottled-gray cast-in-situ finish which contrasts with the luminosity of white walls and the warm yellow brown of the pews.
- The roof plane (in exposed concrete), which lifts and is separated from the walls with a gap, also suspends (by steel hangars) the lightly hovering mezzanine (required for additional seating) whose sides are clear off the walls.
- The sanctuary roof is incised directly above the altar wall to allow a dramatic lighting of the wall exactly at noon (which is the time when the sermon has been delivered)
The space is stark and simple to suggest the experience of the worship of Christ, shorn of any ritual or compulsion other than the simple beauty of it. Biblical text (considered the inspired word of God) is inscribed in the two cast concrete elements as well as on the altar wall, and is the only embellishment of surface.
The fellowship hall below the sanctuary is sunk below ground level and opens up to the streets by a series of pivoted doors that stretch the space out, in a gesture of inclusion and acknowledgement of the locality.
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