Church of the Good Shepherd, Durham, NC

      
CGS Project Information Page and Photo Gallery
With the church poised to grow in­to its ulti­mate size, the lead­er­ship of the Church of the Good Shep­herd asked GS Ar­chi­tec­ture to serve as lead de­sign­er for the work of “com­plet­ing” the fa­cil­it­ies.

Com­plet­ing the fa­cil­it­ies in­cluded eval­u­at­ing ex­ist­ing space use and needs, plan­ning for growth to 1,000 mem­bers, im­prov­ing the aes­thet­ics of the fa­cil­it­ies, and en­han­cing the en­vir­on­ment of the 12.2 acre church cam­pus. A re­view of the church’s space use and min­istry al­lowed GS Ar­chi­tec­ture to pro­ject for a fi­nal fa­cil­ity that would re­quire a sanc­tu­ary for 1,000 people (total at­tend­ance of about 1,700 in two wor­ship ser­vices), ad­di­tion­al nurs­ery and child­care fa­cil­it­ies and a new suite of of­fices.

GS Ar­chi­tec­ture and Reyn­olds and Jew­ell land­scape ar­chi­tects con­ceived a cam­pus that in­cluded and en­fol­ded the church’s ex­tant build­ings. From the front to the rear of the site, the cam­pus is ordered by a wide cent­ral con­course that con­nects a new of­fice wing to the ex­ist­ing Chris­ti­an edu­ca­tion and fel­low­ship fa­cil­it­ies to a form­al sanc­tu­ary. The cam­pus is or­gan­ized as quad­rangles served by four ex­ter­i­or spaces, a front entry plaza, a garden court, a cloister court and an en­trance plaza at the sanc­tu­ary.