Congregation; An exhibition of secular and sacred architecture
February 2020
Curated by the Architecture Foundation, in partnership with Grand Junction
Battersea Baptist Church & Thames Christian School
February - March 2020
Grand Junction at St Mary Magdalene’s, London
An exhibition addressing the changing nature of sacred architecture in Britain through the presentation of 23 buildings designed in the past decade. The selected projects capture a visible statement of Britain’s developing multi-culturalism, and explore how attitudes towards questions of tradition, reform, integration and ornamentation are expressed in a new generation of religious buildings.
This project, sited next to Clapham Junction railway station in south London, will bring together the Battersea Chapel Baptist Church and Thames Christian School, a private mixed secondary school, under one roof. The church stands within the Winstanley estate, where the church has been accommodated in a Michael Manser Associates-designed building since 1973. Set up in 2000, the school currently teaches 125 pupils, of which nearly half are on the special needs register. The new building will allow it to expand to 400 pupils. Built in concrete and cross-laminated timber, the project is conceived in two parts: a rectilinear two-storey plinth shared by the chapel and school, above which the rest of the school’s accommodation is housed in a four-storey S-shaped plan. The façades are bagged brickwork – a pink brick, brushed with a warm grey lime slurry. Details are precast concrete.