Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) is currently renovating their facilities. In a recent building campaign update, Hank Spieker of Selser Schaefer Architects explains an interesting design decision to make a cozier feeling auditorium by randomly varying chair colors with gold (66%), scarlet (11%), purple (11%), and black fabrics (11%).
The idea is that whenever you are in the auditorium that it will always feel full. It will never appear like there are a bunch of empty seats anywhere.
Varying chair colors is a great design theory for large churches with multiple service times. For most of these churches, popular service times are packed while less attended service times can leave the auditorium looking sparse.
For more thoughts from Hank Spieker, go to the 4:55 mark on the following video:
For Discussion:
- What are some of your favorite architectural design tricks?
No kidding, that’s a great idea for churches of any size. plus it adds variety and visual interest without being distracting.
We have that in our 1,300 seat auditorium. I didn’t like it at first, but it makes the room feel full. The only problem is that when people think it is full, they stop wanting to come, hence the need to add another service, even though we have enough seats
I can send a pictures if someone has an email I can send it to.
@Kris
Very interesting. I wondered if it could possibly have that negative effect.
Kris
Are pictures posted in the web? Facebook?
Regards,
Design and architecture combined - looks great for the purpose!
I hate to be the cynical one…but I was a bit astounded at this post. I do understand that as artist part of what you bring to the church is the way to “Clothe the Sanctuary”…BUT shouldn’t we be more concerned with great content and building real growing relationships with Christians, non-Christians, the lost, the disenfranchised, and the hungry to make our church “feel full”?
I do appreciate that certain people have the gift of making a space feel beautiful and warm…but this post made me feel like we have missed the point entirely.
Getting out there and making a difference in the community, and filling the seats with people who care about God’s heart is the real way to make the church feel warm and full.
@Jenni
You will be relieved to know that a church can be the hands and feet of Christ in their city while simultaneously being architecturally strategic.
I agree with Jenni….I fail to see why this even matters?
Why do we need the sanctuary to ‘feel fuller’? Is that just so we can feel better about the service we are doing? Furthermore, is this just a way to account for our failure to be the church God designed?
If we have to compensate for a lack of attendance by creating an optical illusion to make it ‘fuller’, than we went wrong somewhere before the design of the sanctuary.
We must be careful not to get trapped up in the material things of the church and lose focus of what the church is really supposed to do.
Jenni & Jacob - rather than get into an intense debate, I would humbly and lovingly suggest that this may not be the blog for you.
From my perspective - thanks for sharing this great tip! Simple stuff like this can have a huge impact on the energy in a room…
Crossroads Church in Corona Ca has about 3,000 chairs that are randomly purple black tan and red