By DLA Architects
Our Lady of Kapiti Church is not your typical Catholic church.
DLA were charged with creating an innovative, flexible, warm, and welcoming building to house the 500 seat church, 50 seat chapel, a connecting gather space, and the supporting parish offices and facilities. The building needed to represent the spirit of the recently amalgamated local Kapiti parishioners, with a modest and elegant built form, devoid of traditional bell towers and spires.
DLA took on board the parish functional and aesthetic requirements, and challenged the relationship, function, proportions, and their connection to the exterior, in the development of the interior spaces and external appearance.
The exterior form of the building, with large bands of low-level windows, reveals the underlying concept of transparency and providing connection of those within the church, to those being invited from outside. The building materials are a limited palette of cedar timber, plaster, and glazing, complemented by the surrounding pared-back landscaping.
Consultation with the selected consultants and contractor were invaluable in understanding the site conditions and the creation of an economic design solution. Interior spaces work seamlessly together and the main Nave functions extremely well with the acoustic treatment and audio setup suitable for a range of ecclesiastical services and community events.
Together, the project team and parishioners have created a project that fully satisfied the clients brief, was a joy to work on, and a final product that all can be proud o
We are dla, creators of top notch architecture
We're small enough to take care of everything from your modest residential renovation and big enough to design, document and deliver multi-million-dollar industrial and commercial facilities, with the in-house expertise to cater for all projects in between.
Dickson Lonergan Architects (DLA) was founded in Whanganui in 1974 with founding partners Bruce Dickson (retired) and the late Barry Lonergan. Once fully established in the Whanganui region, DLA then started to expand the business, first into Wellington in 1999 with Barry and Glenn starting up the capital city office. Then came the Timaru Office headed up by Murray Ackroyd in 2005 and the further expansion to Hamilton in 2010 with Martin Swann.
The opportunity then arose to open an Auckland office in 2015 with Alana moving north from Wellington. Now with 5 offices, DLA has evolved from its humble beginnings into a nationwide practice, with a passionate team of architects and designers who specialise in all fields from commercial, residential, industrial, interiors, education and public projects through to DLA’s main stay of large scale dairy and food processing architecture.