Location: Singapore, Singapore.

Architect: LAUD Architects.

Grace Baptist Church is a newly built 4-storey family church in suburban Singapore, completed in 2018. The project presented a unique set of sensitivities due to the surrounding mix of landed houses and institutional buildings. The challenge was to fit a large sanctuary, ancillary programmes and sufficient car parking within the tightly-bound site, all aboveground. The design concept is centered around a tight-knit church community, embraced by the all-encompassing love of Christ. The original church building, completed in 1980, had been showing signs of age and required extensive repairs and upgrading. The church members got in touch with the architects to journey with them on this rebuilding process. The journey spanned eight years from inception to completion of the church coupled with appeals for higher building density, fund-raising and design reiterations.

The design concept focused on environmental sensitivities due to the noise sensitivity of the surrounding context, including landed housing, religious institutions and home for troubled youths. The project kickstarted in 2014 promising the newly completed church with a built-up area of approximately 6,500 square meters, over five floors. The volumetric manipulations of the facade involve the simple peeling back of the attic floor (anchored by the cross), to reveal the volume of the main worship hall and heart of the church. The main façade of the building, fronting the neighbourhood, is designed to be visually porous, encouraging visual interaction between church activities and the street, bringing life to the quiet surroundings. The church was conceived as a series of community-centric spaces, individually independent, but always connected to a shared communal space for gathering. Materials were selected thoughtfully, taking into account their aesthetic qualities as well as the ability to bring comfort and enhance spatial experiences in the church. The design considered a modern church in a tropical context. Service spaces such as toilets, car parks and staircases were cladded in ventilated bricks, while the main staircase on the façade was cladded in aluminium expanded mesh with directional openings. The mesh allowed porosity whilst also shielding the staircase from the morning sun. Internally, the mesh provided a privacy screen with daylight and ventilation streaming in.

Photo credit: Melvin H J Tan.