Church in Garden Grove, California

Abstract

The Community Church, in Garden Grove has a ground area of 1067 m² and provides 672 seats for the congregation. Its total planned capacity is 1000 people. The total project involves halls for cultural and social activities, church office, kitchen, as well as secondary annexes; also a Sunday school, with a nursery and schoolrooms for children of various ages. Outdoors, there is an ample parking space, where the motorcars—the Americans' second home—can be orientated facing the altar. Thus their occupants can follow the Mass visually, when the large sliding doors are opened, at the beginning of the service; then, at the end of the service these doors are slowly and solemnly closed. Furthermore, these automobile owners can also follow the service by listening to it through individual loudspeakers, which are supplied to each vehicle. Once more Mr. Neutra has designed thinking of man as a human being, and finding room for the women the children and the men who go to church not only inside the church, but also within the more intimate atmosphere of their own cars. He feels that religion must be something living, evolving with the times. The modern congregation is not that of the primitive Christians, living in their sombre catacombs, nor is it similar to the picturesque and intense believers of the Middle Ages. He has therefore created a happy solution, very apt to the anxious and hopeful people of today.