September 2, 2020
Award Announcement for Central Presbyterian Church
After an immense period of anticipation Phoenix Glass is excited to share that one of their very own projects was the winner of the 8th Annual A+Awards! Founded on the premise of democratizing architecture, the A+Awards is the Architectural industry’s largest and most international awards program honoring the best architecture, spaces and products from across the globe. This year the 2020 popular choice award was given to CPC – Central Presbyterian Church.
Central Presbyterian Church is a new mixed-use building for a vital community organization that has served Vancouver’s West End for 90 years. A 14,000 ft² façade treatment wraps the first three floors of the building with ceramic-fritted glass of red, blue and green crosses. From the second-floor sanctuary’s interior, the small crosses create a three-dimensional, shadowed “pointillism” effect: as natural light passes through the façade and into the space, thousands of the cross symbol are refracted onto the floors, walls and ceilings of the 300-seat, wood-finished sanctuary. Titled RGB, the artist Michael Lin selected the façade’s 3 colours because their combination creates “spiritual” white light, achieving a client request for a sacred space of natural light, “transcendence” and “immanence.” The worship space also preserves and relocates the stained-glass cross from the CPC’s former sanctuary, symbolizing the church’s continuity and identity. Featuring thousands of small crosses, the façade treatment is perceived as three solid colours when viewed from the building’s exterior. The glass transparency also reduces the architecture’s monumentality and integrates the building into its contextual surroundings.
Phoenix Glass would like to congratulate Henriquez Partners Architects, Bosa Properties and our dedicated Phoenix Glass team for all the hard work they put into creating this award winning masterpiece.