Designed by New York David Hotson Architect, Saint Sarkis Church in Carrollton, Texas, celebrates Armenia's legacy as the world's first Christian nation, having adopted Christianity in 301AD, and reflects the faith and endurance of the Armenian people through 14 centuries of challenge and upheaval. Particularly striking is an innovative façade memorializing victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.
Though finished with modern materials, the solid grey mass of the church's exterior refers to the monolithic and sculpture nature of ancient Armenian stone churches. Saint Sarkis Church references, specifically, the ancient Armenian church of Saint Hripsime, which still stands today in the modern Armenian capital of Yerevan.
Working with long-time collaborator and architect Stepan Terzyan, Hotson developed a design concept that recognizes Armenia's ancient architectural and artistic traditions while at the same time looking forward through the use of the contemporary digitally-driven design and fabrication technologies utilized to create the striking façade on the western side of the building memorializing the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide.
Realized in collaboration with architectural services manufacturer Fiandre Architectural Surfaces, the façade depicts the traditional Armenian cross of 'tree of life' made up of interwoven botanical and geometric motifs derived from Armenian art. As a visitor approaches the feature, the overall façade seemingly dissolves into 1.5 million tiny icons or pixels, which derive from the circular emblems that recur throughout traditional Armenian works of each. A computer script generated each pixel to ensure its unique nature. The scale of the individual icons spreading across the entire building façade provides a visceral encounter with the scale of this historical atrocity.
The façade was installed by Graniti Vicentia Façades utilizing the proprietary ventilated façade system of Granitech, which is a division of Iris Ceramica Group dedicated to Ventilated Façade Systems.
It is the first time exterior grade high-resolution digital printing technology was used at a scale such as this to optically engage the viewer in a series of visual scales nested inside each other.
The total interior floor area for the entire complex is about 32,000 square feet. Upon stepping into the church through the memorial façade, the luminous interior is smooth and seemingly scaleless, with no visible lighting fixtures, air conditioning registers, or other contemporary technical details. Instead, heating and cooling is provided with a displacement climate control system that introduces conditioned air at low velocity through floor registers located under the pews. The result is a silent interior free from the mechanical vibration or ambient sound of a conventional high-velocity air conditioning system, thus providing a silent backdrop for the reverberant acoustics of traditional Armenian choral music.
