Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Seating: 850
Area: 9,000 sf
Construction cost: $900,000
Construction: Wood frame on concrete slab, timber trusses in worship space, tile roof. Stucco exterior finish.
Date of completion: 1990
Background
Located in Southwestern Las Vegas, Nevada, the 9,500 SF church was built next to an existing building being used as a church and later remodeled into a social hall. The entrance to the church was located on axis with the parking through a courtyard between the rectory and social hall. Just beyond the parking, at the beginning of the courtyard is a sculptural rendition of Matthew 23 in the form of three separate steles. These are the last works of Thomas O’Donnell. Then, directly preceding the church entrance is a ‘contact fountain’, designed by the architect, symbolizing the brokenness of man’s condition and the pouring of the waters of grace to the world. It’s function, besides providing symbolic reflections and cool water sounds to the entrance, is to be accessible to children, for climbing and blessing themselves, coming and going.
CTK was special for me in many ways in that it provided me with a head start with exposure to Vatican II theology and the U.S. Bishops letter “:Art and Environment”, which gave the U.S. church definite design guidelines for congregations to follow. Because of the guiding principle of Collegiality inherent in the Vatican II documents and the Bishop’s follow-up letter, Catholic congregations were instructed to bring themselves heart and soul into the design process. The challenge for the architect was to bring his talents to the table without preconceptions and listen very carefully to the needs of each parish.
Fr. Bill Kenny at Christ the King took this instruction very seriously and told his architect to conduct meetings with his staff, guiding them through the programming and design process with the principles of Vatican II and the bishop’s letter in mind.
Project Images
About the Design
The Church enters under a bell-arch and inside, through to a large gathering space, which serves a daily chapel used for small liturgies, funerals and wakes in conjunction with the social space and galley to the right. Accessible also are the rest rooms and gift shops.
Entry to the worship space from the Gathering Space is through a full height, glass wall, etched in a desert scene and on axis with the altar platform is the full-immersion marble baptismal font seen through the glass partition from the Gathering Space. Daily mass is held in a small Chapel for 25 seats to the left. A moveable wall to the Daily Chapel provides full access to the Gathering Space for wakes and small rituals. Coffee is served after mass from a small galley on a Gathering Space wall opposite the Chapel.
Beyond the full-length and height glass wall, the full immersion baptismal font lies straight ahead. Once past the glass wall, the space ascends up to a wood ceiling, carried by 75’ long, rough, wood trusses with black iron connectors and penetrated in the middle by a 15’x15’ diffuse glass pyramidal oculus. The worship space is a large room (105’x75’) with two stained glass windows astride a back-projection screen on the back wall, and large, stained glass windows (10’x10’) on side walls to the left and right, depicting the “Triduum” and abstractions of “ascending” and “striving”. Large sliding doors are pulled across the stained glass windows, to darken the space. On the left side wall, is a glass door, etched with images of wheat, to a small 24-hour Reservation Chapel.
In the center of the worship space is a moveable altar platform directly under the oculus, with the music group behind. Because of the axial relationship between the entrance, baptismal font, altar and projection screen, auditorium seating is necessarily antiphonal or monastic with chair seating on both sides of the altar. This arrangement necessitates a change of choreography of the celebrant, to which the priests in this parish take full advantage.
Natural light is captured by a 15 foot square pyramidal, milk-glass oculus at the center on the room, illuminating the entire worship space from the highest point of the roof, raining diffuse light down through the trusses and up to the wood ceiling. At both ends of the space and on both sides of a back-projection window are large stained glass windows depicting abstractions of Christian thoughts. Heavy wood panels can be drawn across the windows and a fabric blind over the oculus completely darkens the space.
Artificial lighting was adjustable for any purpose. But the most spiritual scene can be accomplished with them off and with all chairs facing the altar, the building seems to disappear as the faces of the congregation are illuminated by natural light from the oculus. Another spiritual drama is experienced on the Feast of Tridiuum. The entire congregation enter the sanctuary carrying lighted candles lighted from a bonfire in the courtyard into the darkened sanctuary . The growing presence of illumination onto the wood surfaces of the walls and ceiling in the large space is truly moving.
The design of this church received a certificate of merit from the IFRAA, and adjunct of the American Institute of Architects.
