The Church of Conscious Harmony

The Church of Conscious Harmony is a 12,000 sf sanctuary that includes the Fellowship, teaching spaces and administrative offices. These spaces are connected by open air, covered walkways, which minimize the need for conditioned spaces. The courtyard in the center of the facility includes, garden space, a rock bed for a stream for drainage and a large covered social area with picnic tables. Furthermore, large movable walls exist in order to provide protection from strong winds.

In order to meet the church ministry’s request to involve the congregation have an environmentally conscious facility, straw bale construction was chosen for the structure. Although labor intensive, this type of construction provided high insulation and resulted in the sanctuary being Austin’s second straw bale commercial structure.

Another sustainable feature of the site included the use of a rainwater collection system. This system minimizes the effects of stormwater run-off from the structure and parking and helps meet irrigation and drinking needs on the facility.

Other sustainable features include:

• Regionally harvested structural wood columns.
• Regionally sourced clay tiling and pervious paving materials.
• Parking area landscaped to help manage storm water.
• Native, drought-resistant landscaping used
  to reduce irrigation demands.
• Natural day-lighting employed to reduce
  energy consumption and heat gain.
• Minimal interior finish out was a calculated effort
  to reduce materials usage.
• No and low VOC finishes were used on the interior.

Architect

Lake | Flato

Owner

Church of Conscious Harmony

Size

12,000 sf

Location

Austin, TX