Charleston's "Green" Church Featured on AIArchitect

Charleston, SC, November 02, 2007 --(PR.com)-- The new “green” addition to the oldest church in Charleston, designed by Raleigh, NC-based architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, is featured in an article entitled “Greening God’s House” that appears this week in AIArchitect, the American Institute of Architect’s online magazine
(www.aia.org/architect/thisweek07).

The addition to the Circular Congregation Church on Meeting Street features a vegetated roof, a geothermal heating and cooling system, a rainwater collection cistern for landscape use, recycled building materials wherever possible, and window placement to maximize natural lighting and ventilation. According to Harmon, the church leaders and congregation not only welcomed but demanded sustainable design.

That doesn’t surprise the article’s author, Michael J. Crosbie. “For most religious congregations, stewardship is a key part of their mission,” he writes. “This is why religious clients are more and more receptive to sustainable design ideas.”

Crosbie is chairman of the Architecture Department at the University of Hartford and editor of Faith & Form magazine. He and Harmon recently spoke at the Duke Endowment’s Rural Church Division conference in Charlotte, NC, which inspired Crosbie’s article.

To illustrate “Greening God’s House,” AIArchitect includes images of the Circular Church’s model, an elevation showing its many open-air porches (or outside hallways) and the “green” roof soon after it was seeded.

For more information on the project, visit http://www.frankharmon.com and select “current” projects.

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