I personally think that the “Green” movement will drive architectural styles in churches and every other building in the U.S. in the next few decades. These days, it’s all about decreasing our carbon imprint.
So does anyone know how the traditional cruciform church buildings measure up to “green” standards? I would think they would do pretty good compared to the clam-shells and boxes of modern times.
This will depend on what climate the church is in, and what measure you are comparing. As a general rule, a cruciform building is going to lose more heat and cold to the outside than a building that is square, round, or another simple shape, because it has greater external surface area. On the other hand, there is more wall space that can be used for windows, so lighting bills (at least in the daytime) can be reduced. Unfortunately, lighting is small potatoes compared to heating and cooling for most buildings.
It also depends on what you mean by traditional. In the US, most people would consider the height of traditional to be Gothic. A traditional Gothic church from the old days will be made of stone, which is a lousy insulator, although not terrible if it’s thick. It will have lots of stained glass windows, which are even worse insulators. The vaulted ceiling that soars above the congregation will have to get quite warm before it gets comfortably warm at floor level where the people are, and it will take quite a bit of light to illuminate the entire church. In the summer, however, the high ceiling will allow the heat to rise away from the pews, and if it cooled enough during the night, the thick stone walls will help maintain a cooler temperature. Hopefully there are enough windows that open to provide cross-ventilation, and hopefully the windows high up can be opened and closed without a lot of trouble, or have been fitted with fans to help vent the air.
Those are all considerations for a parish considering energy costs of a new church building to replace their current one. More often the decision has been made to build a new church, and the question is which one. If we are talking about a new building, a lot of the disadvantages I mentioned above can be lessened with modern materials. Like insulation in the walls, insulated windows, fluorescent and LED lights. But you can’t change the laws of physics, and a church which is taller, and has more external wall length will always exchange heat with the outside air more quickly than a squat, round church of the same materials.
One possible way to get around this problem, if you are devoted to the cruciform building shape, is to build an internal church as part of a larger building, so that the extra surface area is not against the outside. But this is tricky if you are trying to maintain a Gothic look, and I’m not sure I’ve seen this with traditional-looking churches.
confused: Must be a building code thing) off to the side.