M.S.

The site is in Old Town Alexandria which lies outside of the metropolitan area of Washington DC in northern Virginia. The project is a church, and it sits looking over the Potomac River on Union and Queen Streets in the historic district of Alexandria. My initial idea was that a church can relate to nature because an individual's memory is commonly related to the elements of nature and is associated with familiar patterns. Building designs formed by patterns in nature are sensitive to what the users have previously experienced. The user can then understand the language created by the architect. The means for achieving this idea was through a study of the structure for the church, the rhythm of the structure, and how it relates to Old Town. It is this order that now provides the church's relationship to nature and allows the users to feel as if they are within a garden. / Master of Architecture

The real task of architecture begins once functional and behavioral needs have been satisfied. Its essence is to give poetic form to the pragmatic. My work is only interested in the discovery, not the recovery of ideas; the invention, not classification. In working this way the search is for the essential and lasting principles in architecture, the origins of which must lie in the psychological experience of a building which is physically realized in the mind through one's senses. Thus architecture's manifestation begins as a set of intended experiences which begin to write a narrative or fable for a building. In writing a fable rather than a theoretical essay something basic has been found; fables remain immutable long after theories have disappeared. The invention of these writings is central to the work and not merely literary accessory, for it is this narrative that gives a building its ritual of experience, and it is to the support of these rituals that most of my work addresses itself. Thus the poetic form begins in the composition of experiences; the narrative. / Master of Architecture

The city of Blacksburg, Virginia, has moved its boundaries farther and farther west of U.S.460. Though a large amount of commercial and residential architecture has accompanied this growth, there has been no sacred architecture to complement any of this secular construction. With this in mind, a rolling pasture along Price's Fork Road west of U.S.46O was chosen as the site for a new religious/community center for the residents of Blacksburg's expanding boundaries. The design scheme, for a Roman Catholic church, consists of a K fellowship hall, meditation garden, and sanctuary surrounded by a protective wall. This scheme responds to the traditions of the Church as well as the spiritual needs of the surrounding community. / Master of Architecture