Meetinghouse
Quaker Meetinghouse tumbling down sloping site
Core I
critic: Nancy Nichols
Fall 2023
This Quaker
Meetinghouse and education center, located on a heavily sloping site, pauses
and inhabits the motion of a cube tumbling down the mountain.
An initial wood carving study
cut and merged simple cubes at peculiar angles — meeting at corners and preserving shared surfaces.
Guided by a Quaker pursuit of simplicity and integrity through craft, the study
explored how volumetric material can approach infinitesimal cusps of
transformation.
The building highlights
these transitions as bridges between wavering volumes, starting at the top of
the site and guiding the user along a single accessible path as the forms twist
and turn around them. Within the third cube, which is suspended above the
ground, the path arrives at the meetinghouse, a light-filled space of
unexpected simplicity and grounding legibility for gathering and spiritual
reflection, whose walls broadcast natural light into the surrounding area. The
path then descends into the final righted cube, a learning center which
cantilevers from the hill, counterweighted at a corner by the tumbling mass.
Analysis of cube tumbling down hill
Massing Model
Wood Carving Studies
Section