small but fine

We began the semester with a lot of class discussions.  We talked about what a field chapel is, what ours should be, and researched relevant examples of field chapels.  We also researched Germany history, local history, European architectural styles, and religions in general.  After two weeks of this research and discussions, we finally moved on to the design phase.  Each student came up with his or her own design scheme.  Each design was refined for a month, when we narrowed the class down to 4 distinct schemes.  These would be the 4 designs to be presented to the client and the community during our spring break trip to Germany.  Students worked in groups for two weeks detailing these projects and preparing presentations for Germany.  The studio would take a trip during spring break to meet the people involved, present the project, and experience German culture.

Father Moser-Feesche is the person responsible for this whole project.  He's a priest from Bödigheim, Germany.  He got the idea to build a communal chapel that could help link his village with two neighboring villages - Großeicholzheim and Seckach.  He found a site for the chapel on a hilltop in the center of these three villages.  From this summit, you can see the church towers in all three villages.  Father Moser-Feesche sees this as an opportunity to bring these three communities together, or 'building bridges' as he puts it.  Some local architects from the area - Ecker Architekten (www.ecker-architekten.de/) - happen to be good friends of one Frank Flury, a design/build professor at IIT.  So Prof. Flury organized a studio of 14 students to realize this project.  This group of students would be responsible for the designing and detailing of the chapel, and Ecker Architekten are helping us with permits and other legal matters.  Now the design process begins.

Hallo.  I'm Seth Ellsworth, a 4th year undergraduate student of architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).  I'm part of Prof. Frank Flury's studio this semester - "Small but fine: a field chapel in the Odenwald, Germany."  Our project is to design a tiny 'field chapel' in the German countryside.  Our class decided to set up this blog as a journal of our experiences throughout the project.  I'll try to be as informative as I can, and we hope you enjoy following us through this experience!