A new church in savannah

Located along the Savannah River, this new church is intended to fit seamlessly into the fabric of Savannah’s oldest district. Savannah’s growth since its founding has extended out from its Georgian core along its river. The new church design needed to integrate into this existing architectural character while also navigating a narrow site and significant topographical challenges.

The church’s composition draws from both American and British Georgian precedents, with particular attention being given to Gibbs’ St. Mary le Strand in London. This was an effective precedent in negotiating the tight site constraints. While the facades of many Georgian churches (including Independent Presbyterian in Savannah) sit in front of a wider nave massing, at St. Mary le Strand the entire church fits behind the main facade which keeps a relatively slender profile. In order to better understand regional character and proportional relationships between portico and tower, I completed a comparative analytique of St. Phillip’s in Charleston and Independent Presbyterian in Savannah.

The facade is also a compositional exercise which seeks to unify a protruding circular portico (the circle in horizontal plane) with the arch of a triumphal arch motif (the circle in vertical plane). Proportional analyses were made of both Sant’Andrea al Quirinale and the Arc de Triomphe to assist in this exercise.