Fellowship Church of Knoxville
Knoxville, Tennessee
Seat Count: 1,350
Project Type: New Construction
Architect: Station 19 Architects
AD Scope: Acoustics, Audio, Video
Projection, Theatrical Lighting
Fellowship Church was experiencing crowded rooms in every aspect of their ministry. AD met with the church to talk about their goals for expansion and what they wanted their new worship center to do. The church shared with us their ministry priorities and we used this as the platform for our design.
The first priority was preaching, so we worked with the architect to design a room that was presentational in nature. The sound system was designed to provide high speech intelligibility. The main speaker system is a mono system which provides uniform sound coverage to the main seating area. It is a three-way system providing full range frequency response.
A very close second priority for the church was congregational participation. They felt that their focus as a community and relationship based ministry would be hindered by architectural elements such as balconies and prosceniums. The acoustic elements were designed to allow members to hear one another easily during services and visual community was achieved through the sightlines.
Although the room was designed to be multi-use, it was determined that a sloped floor was an absolute necessity to maintain excellent visual connection between the pastor and the congregation and to allow the congregation to see each other.
The third priority was multimedia presentation. We determined sizing, positioning and orientation of projection screens to provide connectivity between platform activities and video information.
The music program at Fellowship Church features a high-energy praise band with worship singers. To improve communication among musicians and singers, we recommended a carpeted platform, stage draperies and sound absorption for the ceiling over this area to control the sound from instruments and stage monitors.
