Working with Glass Fiber Reinforced Gypsum
Sculpting the Sanctuary of the Saint Sarkis Church
Architecture shapes an intangible artistic medium, the medium of architectural space. Our work is focused on this artistic medium, on manipulating the tangible, material ground of solid construction in order to shape a figure from the intangible, immaterial medium of architectural space.
Our aesthetic goal is to shape precisely delineated figures of architectural space filled with reflected natural light.
This approach has found its fullest expression to date in the design of the sanctuary of the Saint Sarkis Armenian Church, constructed in Carrollton, Texas.
The interior of the Saint Sarkis Church is composed as a series of intersecting spatial volumes, modeled on the sanctuary of the ancient Armenian Church of Saint Hripsime, built in 618AD, which still stands outside the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
In the Saint Sarkis sanctuary, the space of Saint Hripsime is reinterpreted as an outwardly-expanding volume of space, softly illuminated by natural light reflected into the interior through concealed openings. This glowing figure of space envelopes the congregation in the memory of the ancient origins of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
These spatial volumes were sheathed in an innovative construction material: Glass Fiber Reinforced Gypsum or GFRG.
GFRG is a strong, lightweight, hybrid construction material fabricated by embedding glass fiber reinforcement within a matrix of gypsum—the same material used in the manufacture of conventional gypsum wallboard.
GFRG is fabricated through a digitally driven process. Working directly from our digital design model, industry partner Formglas divided the doubly-curved surfaces at Saint Sarkis into interlocking segments that were cast in GRFG and fitted with concealed overlapping joints.
GFRG is installed using industry-standard tools and skills to fasten the overlapping joints of the separate doubly-curved segments together in a proscribed sequence. Adjacent singly-curved and flat surfaces are then framed in conventional cold-rolled steel and sheathed in conventional gypsum wallboard.
GFRG is finished like conventional gypsum wallboard; the entire assembly was taped, spackled, sanded, primed and painted in a process that is identical to finishing gypsum wallboard.
At Saint Sarkis, the result is a smooth, scaleless sheath of space. Illuminated by reflected natural light, the enveloping material enclosure retreats to serve as the ground and the expanding, light-filled volume of space emerges as the primary figure.
Stepping into the space of the sanctuary elicits a sense of moving within the immaterial artistic medium itself, suspended within a figure of illuminated space in which light is experienced as an immediate presence.
The Saint Sarkis Armenian Church has been the recipient of regional, national, and international design awards including
The 2024 AIANY Honor Award conferred by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects at their annual awards gala in New York.
The 2025 International Architecture Award conferred by a jury of The European Centre for Architecture at their annual awards gala in Athens, Greece, September 20th.
The Architectural Design Award for 2025 to be conferred by the jury of the Built Design Awards Program at the annual award ceremony on Basel, Switzerland on November 21st.
Using the freedom offered by glass-fiber-reinforced gypsum construction, DH_A is extending this spatial approach further in our current work, sculpting luminous figures of architectural space that respond to the changing direction and color of natural light, and to the moving point of view of the individual visitor.