Edge Community Church is a vibrant evangelical Christian community who since 1969 occupied an older, now demolished, building on this site. The new church building provides a welcoming hub for The Edge community life. It has a large contemporary worship space that evokes the sacred with iconography embedded in the architecture, a smaller worship space, community café, children’s/multipurpose spaces, a hi spec kitchen, meeting and administration areas.
The building design language is contemporary and simple in form, with the planes of the building surface varied and articulated through a mixture in cladding to express the spaces within. Coloured glass is strategically used to anchor the building in the ecclesiastic tradition. The challenge was to maximise the building area on a tight site, provide carparking and external play areas and stage the works to enable the church to continue to function during the construction period. The solution was to provide a two story building. The upper floor has a viewing window down to the main worship space.
The church expresses much of their community life through shared hospitality therefore the provision of both the café at the ground floor and the kitchen and multipurpose space at the upper floor were of highest priority. These spaces enjoy good natural daylight and effective connections to the main entry and other spaces.