The best new building in Texas is a church in the Dallas suburbs | marklamster
A grid of 1.5 million unique glyphs covers the front facade of the St. Sarkis church building, representing the estimated 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide. Viewed from a distance, they crystallize into an abstracted pattern.It would be difficult to imagine a less promising setting for an ambitious new work of architecture than the generic sprawl where the North Dallas suburbs of Carrollton and Hebron meet.
The church is virtually identical in size, basic shape and cruciform plan to a model that stands nearly half a world away and predates it by almost 1,400 years:, a chunky pile of beige stone completed in the year 618, some 10 miles to the west of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Its survival exemplifies the resilience of the Armenian people, who have endured at the crossroads of empire for centuries.
From the pinnacle of its zinc roof on down, the church building is everywhere a muted matte gray. According to Hotson, the uniform coloration is an “explicit attempt to create some of the monolithic sculptural quality that you find in St. Hripsime and other classic Armenian churches.” The result is a sense of austere, reserved coolness — ifwas a building, this would be it.
, one of Yerevan’s Soviet-era monuments, into a museum and cultural center. He selected Hotson, who had no connection to Armenia, as his architect. That tragic history is inscribed on the front of St. Sarkis in a manner that is mesmerizing in its graphic complexity and utterly heartbreaking in its symbolic force. Wallpapering that western facade is a grid of 1.5 million unique ornamental glyphs , each roughly 1 centimeter in diameter, representing the estimated 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide.
Events in the Caucuses amplify the memorial’s power. A territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan has festered in recent months, with Russia, which hadbetween its former satellites, distracted by its own war in Ukraine. The conflict has jeopardized the fate of thousands of ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan-controlled areas.
The design, everywhere, is executed with a precision that is all the more remarkable in that Akilian acted as his own construction manager, despite having no formal experience in that role. “I’m a perfectionist, so for me it’s important to do things the way they’re supposed to be,” he says. “All the money I saved by not going with a general contractor, I probably spent fixing mistakes.”
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