Armenian church in Texas is named US Building of the Year 2022

• 01.31.2023, 13:10
•  America,  World,  Armenia

world-architects.com

Saint Sarkis Armenian Church, located in the north Dallas suburb of Carrollton, has received the most votes in our poll for US Building of the Year 2022. Designed by David Hotson Architect, the church reaches far back in time and thousands of miles across the globe to link itself with Armenian traditions and people, world-architects.com informs.

As we described the church when it was featured as US Building of the Week on April 25, just two days after its consecration, the design “melds ancient forms and contemporary technologies to express the church's Armenian roots and memorialize the victims of the genocide.” The image on the west facade, seen above, was printed by the Italian company Fiandre in high resolution on UV-resistant porcelain panels. Furthermore, a Grasshopper script guaranteed each icon was unique and their distribution resulted in a legible overall image. 

The abstraction of Saint Hripsime Church — itself an austere, monolithic mass built entirely of stone — involved matching three main materials on the exterior: precast concrete walls, glass fiber reinforced concrete light coves, and standing seam zinc roofing. Inside, references to the stone dome and vaults of the 7th-century church are rendered as double-curved plaster vaults made with glass-fiber-reinforced gypsum: historically inspired shapes and modern surfaces created with contemporary means.

On hearing the news that Saint Sarkis Armenian Church was voted US Building of the Year 2022, architect David Hotson sent us these words:

“It is an honor to have the Saint Sarkis Armenian Church receive this acknowledgement, an honor that I share with the full project team and with all of those who voted for the project, most especially those throughout the Armenian Diaspora for whom this building has a special significance. The Saint Sarkis Church reaches back fourteen centuries to connect with the architecture of the world’s most ancient Christian nation, even as it brings a contemporary spatial sensibility and progressive construction technology to a suite of buildings overlooking the vast Texas plain. The western facade of Saint Sarkis memorializes each of the 1.5 million victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide, an event that forced the ancestors of many members of the congregation from their ancient homeland. It is my hope that the visibility the church receives from this honor will help raise awareness in America of the history of the world’s most ancient Christian nation, and of the persecution of Armenian Christians that is still happening today in Nagorno-Karabakh.”