The Art Chapel

 

Location

Lincoln Nebraska

Clients

The F Steet Community Church

Partners 

Jean Stryker, Creative Arts Director, F Street Neighborhood Church
Jeff Heerspink, Pastor, F Street Neighborhood Church
Willow Applegate, Art Chapel Director,F Street Neighborhood Church
David Crouse, Superintendent, Crounse Construction
Brendan Crounse, General Contractor, Crounse Construction
Jerry Reif, Assistant Director, Nebraska Innovation Studio

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art Chapel is a PLAIN–FACT collaboration to convert a 19th-century single-room chapel into an art studio for the South Downtown neighbourhood of Lincoln.  The new facility provides studio space for adults to cultivate their creativity through art and craft instruction, supporting public events in a community with few cultural outlets. It is an extension of  the F Street Neighborhood Church’s engagement program with a community that has high incidents of homelessness, crime, and substance abuse disorder.

 

 

 

The primary design acts are subtractive – removing material and abstracting the building to highlight generic qualities and simple beauty. A large “rolling wall” replicates the original façade and opens the Art Chapel to the community both literally and figuratively. Inspired by the subtle way members of the community are invited to gather for services informally in the car park and on the church steps, the rolling wall makes the entire building an extension of the public realm.

 

 

The collaboration began with Fall 2019 PLAIN DESIGN-BUILD design research studio at UNL’s College of Architecture under the theme of Make Nothing.  Students were challenged to explore a solution where design adopts a similar mindset to the restrained expression of American minimalist art. The studio drew from Ed Ruscha’s maxim that the “Huh, wow!” factor lies in art’s ability to disarm the viewer through an apparent simplicity. The studio aimed to draw parallels to this in a way that builds on the legacy of expediency that is the tradition of single-room chapel typology.

 

 

 

Designing versatile movable furniture was a big part of the project. Custom pieces include powered, nesting work tables, stackable bookcases that double as benches, and a rolling ladder. All are built from Fir marine plywood to match the interior sheathing of the building.

Details make the project: the Art Chapel includes many subtle, often hidden details that improve functionality, simplify aesthetics, and reinforce the “build nothing” ethic of adaptive reuse.

This approach is characterized by an entrance sequence where a portion of the façade (with original siding, panel doors and sash window remaining intact) “subtracts” to reveal the gallery’s interior. This move is inspired by the church’s current policy of inviting people to “loiter” in the carpark and listen to the service without having to cross the threshold of the church. By building on this arrangement, the Art Chapel creates an unimposing forecourt and deck to produce a space where visitors can congregate without constraint. This subtraction is replicated inside the space with an internal version of the front façade that completes the gallery space at the end of the building.

 

Early design phases encouraged students to learn from the existing building—a rare example of architectural pragmatism in a nineteenth-century chapel. The group shared a commitment to simplicity, agreeing that no individual should impose a dominant language or a historicist approach. This co-creative model ensured that each contribution was rooted in a common design ethos.

Students engaged directly with both the client and the community, exploring how architectural restraint could reduce the anxieties often experienced by those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This ethos informed each design-build activity, as students refined skills in cabinetry, steelwork, and embedded services—all executed with precision and restraint.