{"id":150741,"date":"2025-05-02T07:42:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T06:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/?p=150741"},"modified":"2025-04-30T16:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T15:24:10","slug":"reimagining-sacred-space-vectorworks-st-johns-episcopal-churchs-plan-resilient-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/digital-construction-news\/bim-news\/reimagining-sacred-space-vectorworks-st-johns-episcopal-churchs-plan-resilient-future\/150741\/","title":{"rendered":"Reimagining sacred space with Vectorworks: St. John\u2019s Episcopal Church\u2019s plan for a resilient future"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a burst pipe forced parishioners out of St John\u2019s Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, Vectorworks software was key to understanding the building, as Fran\u00e7ois L\u00e9vy explains<\/h2>\n

In December 2022, a pipe burst in the ceiling of the Parish Hall of St John\u2019s Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, causing significant damage and forcing the parishioners out of a space that enjoyed daily usage. They were faced with a decision: make repairs and restore the building to its prior condition, undertake a comprehensive remodel, or level the building and build an all-new Parish Hall on the five-acre property. The parish needed to understand the relative costs of these three approaches and weigh those against the benefits of a new or nearly new Parish Hall that could better address their current and future needs.<\/p>\n

Our firm, Fran\u00e7ois L\u00e9vy Architecture + Interiors PLLC<\/a>, was engaged to help evaluate the suitability of the existing Hall, laying the preliminary groundwork to help guide future design work.<\/p>\n

In the course of this work, we helped the parish consider both current needs and how the building could be re-imagined to meet future needs<\/a> consistent with their vision for their church family and its place in the community.<\/p>\n

Our goal was to deliver a report based on a physical investigation and documentation of the building, along with conversations with parishioners. These discussions helped identify the key functions and needs of the Parish Hall and quantify the space required to meet these goals<\/p>\n

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The south elevation of the St John\u2019s Episcopal Church Parish Hall in Austin, Texas. It was originally the church\u2019s sanctuary and has been modified several times over the years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Parish Hall had started as the church Sanctuary decades before and, over a series of ad hoc additions and changes, had evolved to its current state. Our team of three began by thoroughly surveying the structure, drafting an as-built plan<\/a> \u201cin situ\u201d in Vectorworks Architect<\/a> in real time as we measured, and taking extensive photographs as we went. While drawing as we measured was a slightly slower process in the short term, it helped ensure that our measurements were thorough, avoiding having to go back for another site visit to recoup a missed dimension.<\/p>\n

We also knew that a comprehensive remodel of the building was a possibility, and we felt it was important to capture and document information in three dimensions. Later design work would be greatly assisted by having a 3D model as the basis for design. To that end, we used BIM components wherever possible for our documentation: walls, doors and windows, stairs, structural members, slabs, and roofs.<\/p>\n

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Our as-built Vectorworks model of the Parish Hall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For elements requiring more careful documentation, we used Vectorworks Cloud Services<\/a>\u2019 Photos to 3D Model feature to create a faithful 3D model as a component of our overall building model.<\/p>\n

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A textured 3D mesh model of the columbarium, generated from smartphone photos uploaded to the Vectorworks Cloud Services site, inserted into our as-built model. The stained-glass window is also captured from a photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For programming purposes, we added Space objects<\/strong> to the as-built model using the automatic boundary feature. Then, we developed a worksheet within Vectorworks Architect to tabulate the net floor area of the existing spaces. We intended to use this floor area to compare to the program we were simultaneously developing with the parish from our stakeholder meetings.<\/p>\n

From those programming sessions, it became clear that, to accommodate all the functions the church community was hoping for, the current building was too small by about 2,000 gross square feet. At current construction costs, our rough estimate was that their total program would exceed their initial construction budget by nearly a factor of two.<\/p>\n

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A \u201cdollhouse\u201d view of our as-built model, with Spaces rendered in transparent colors by function.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In working with the parish, we considered how the program could either be pared down or certain spaces deferred or expanded in a later phase.<\/p>\n

From our worksheet analysis, we discussed the following options with the parish:<\/p>\n