ST.

MATTHEW’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH

-CHARLES MOORE
 ABOUT THE
• Architect: CHARLES MOORE
BUILDING
• Year of Completion: 1983
• Location: Los Angeles at california
• Property Type: Religious
• Architectural Style: Late Modern
INTRODUCTION
• The Parish of Saint Matthew in Pacific Palisades was founded in
1941 and moved to its current location in 1953 (bringing its church
building with it). A 1978 fire destroyed the building along with
eighty-six homes, leaving the congregation without a sanctuary.
• The group decided to view the disaster as an opportunity to bring
the church community together to plan a new building, and hired
architectural firm Moore to guide them in the design process. With
the requirement that the design had to be approved by two-thirds
of the congregation, the architects went to work on a collaboration
that would combine two different desires: one for a lofty,
symmetrical, acoustically superb church with little glass or wood;
and one for a more rustic, informal space with intimate seating, lots
of wood, and a connection to the landscape outside.
• The resulting building, completed in 1983, integrates these
different viewpoints with great success, using a Late Modern style
that is lovely and functional without being aggressive.
• The church’s entrance is framed by low, informal porches that
usher you into a glass narthex, transitioning to a tall, formal nave
marked by steel arches that are both structural support and
ornamentation. A hipped roof intersects the nave and transept in
a way that accommodates existing mature trees and forms
courtyards, while operable skylights at the ridge of the roof allow
for climate control without air conditioning.
• From the baptistery fountain, the
plaza gently terraces down a
series broad stairs to a standard
suburban parking lot. this small
chapel confidently expresses more
architectural ideas and a larger
urban presence than its suburban
location would suggest.
• Essentially a one-room building, this
small chapel manages to create a
complex range of outdoor and urban
spaces around it. Moore employs wood
truss trellises and free-standing walls to
wrap the chapel with a series of
terraces, courtyards and open-air
passages.
A narrow outdoor hallway wraps around the
chapel from this cloister to a second court,
enclosed by trellises punctuated and
interrupted by sycamore trees.
• Between the chapel and a small community
room is an intimate courtyard, framed by
two of Moore’s favorite design elements:
water in the form of a reflecting pool and a
set of Louis Kahn-style shadow arcades
created by 2×4 framing and sage-grey plaster
walls.
 • Together, the chapel, arbor,
belfry, and a magnificent
sycamore frame a small piazza.

Within the entry piazza, the baptistery

peeks out of the building as a small
reflecting pool – again using water as an
architectural element on par with walls
and columns – and perhaps suggesting
baptism as the doorway to the
communion of the church body.
INTERIOR
• Elegant stained glass windows by artist Jane Marquis bring the
outside in, in a dance of dappled color. The church’s interior is curved
creating an intimate sitting, and windows are situated to frame views
of a prayer garden outside.
• St. Matthews Episcopal Church is a great example of the potential of
a collaborative design process bringing architect and client together.
•  the primary purpose of the Church
is not its exterior form, but its
interior space. At St Matthew’s the
nave huddles under warm wood
details and trusses that rise to a
traditional crucifix roof line. Perhaps
reflecting the egalitarian design
process, pews are arranged in semi-
circular pattern focused on the altar
at the center. The arc of the seats is
echoed by crescent of hanging light
fixtures which 
Orhan Ayyüce suggests betrays the
influence of mosques and Islamic
architecture on Moore’s wide-
ranging interests and appetites.
• Seating for 350 congregants is made intimate by
its curved plan, allowing everyone to be within
seven rows of the altar.
• To accommodate the desire for wood, without
sacrificing acoustics, a system of wall battens was
developed on walls of structural steel frame with
four inches of plaster.
• Windows are minimized in the nave and located
to frame views of the prayer garden, while a small
adjoining chapel is made especially transparent
for its connection to the outside.
• it has operable skylights at the ridge. These and
the building volume obviate the need for air
conditioning, while the climate allows for minimal
heating.
• The exterior of the building is stucco with
expansion joints composed to recall the 1920s
half-timbered stucco of the nearby Founder's Hall.
INTERIORS
EXTERIORS
 ARCHITECT CHARLES MOORE
• Charles Willard Moore (October 31, 1925 – December
16, 1993) was an American architect, educator, writer, 
Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and
winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991.
• Moore graduated from the University of Michigan
 in 1947 and earned both a Master's and a Ph.D at 
Princeton University in 1957, where he studied
under Professor Jean Labatut.
• From his only surviving projects from
undergraduate course,the worker’s housing
project reveals charles fascination for modern
design.
• The next big turning point in moore’s career was
the tie up with CENTERBROOK.
• Serving as a teaching assistaant for louis khan,the
philadelphia architect who taught a design studio.
 DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF MOORE

FIRST PRINCIPLE
If we are to devote our lives to making buildings,we
have to believe that they are worth it,that they live
and speak.
SECOND PRINCIPLE
The spaces we feel,the shapes we see,and the ways
we move in buildings should assist the human
memory in reconstructing connections through
space and time.
THANK YOU