From place of worship to domestic bliss
Converted church becomes ultra-modern family home
While the high, vaulted ceilings, vivid stained glass and spacious sanctuaries common to church design may work for worship, such size and scale is generally considered too operatic for the typical family home.
That didn’t stop a 30-something woman in Chicago from deciding that a vast, aging church could be converted into the perfect home for herself, her mate, her two children and the baby who was on the way.
The 5,500-square-foot space, with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, took two years to complete. The process was complicated; overhauls or repairs were made to just about every system, walls were moved, and openings were made for windows.
Every decision was carefully examined and considered: for example, electrical junction boxes had to be planned to accommodate lighting that hung from a 25-foot ceiling.
To handle the conversion, the homeowner enlisted Chicago-based Linc Thelen, whose practice embraces interior architecture, design-builds and visual art. Here, he oversaw all aspects of the renovation and design, and custom-designed furniture and fixtures for the space, which also features his art.
The client, explains Thelen, wanted an open, airy, loft-like feel. She also wanted separate bedrooms, a den, a laundry room and an office. Therein lay the design challenge.
“How do have the feeling of a loft when you have all these designated rooms?” Thelen says, describing his design thought process.
“How are we going to break it up, but make it bigger? And these big, stained-glass windows don’t provide a ton of light, so how do we bring more light in?”
The redesign, done in collaboration with Scrafano Architects, tackled those challenges one by one. Low light, for example, ceased to be an issue when the foyer was opened up and a nine-foot sliding door was installed at the other end, while skylights and a bank of windows on the east side of the home were added.
The foyer nods to the building’s past with a pew, a quietly elegant chandelier and herringbone floor tile that relates to the soft greens in the stained-glass windows. As well, a bell tower that formerly housed the furnace now has a glass floor that looks into the home, and windows that look out onto downtown Chicago.
References to the building’s past are, however, deliberately restrained, as Thelen wanted to avoid a “themed” look.
“That’s a problem with some clients,” Thelen explains.
“They look at things on Pinterest and it becomes the theme. It’s not organic. The driving force should be architectural. You have to listen to your environment and let it direct you, rather than forcing something onto it.”
There were other challenges, including an initially fickle client.
“At the beginning, she was all over the board. She liked modern, but she also liked industrial and shabby chic,” Thelen says. “But it’s hard to combine all those; you have to take a direction.”
Thelen weighted the space heavily — about 90 per cent, he estimates — toward modern, adding industrial touches such as barn doors in the boys’ room and choosing softer, pastel tones in area rugs and bedding for the master bedroom.
He describes the design/build process as “a series of investigations and questions,” which he approached as he might a painting.
“I compose it like a kind of canvas. It’s really about knowing how to use architectural elements and accentuate them and give them breathing space. It’s like art — you’ve got to give (the elements) space, but make sure they relate to the rest of the space.”