The McKnight Group’s free i3 webinars not only inform about the church design and church building process, they give church leaders a chance to get specific questions answered by people who design and build these places every day. In our recent webinar on designing church spaces for children, attendees asked some excellent questions. Here are our answers.
One Room, Two Congregations: Sharing Space Between Kids and Adults
A church leader asked how to handle a space that needs to work double duty: an adult classroom or gathering room on Sunday morning, then a K-5 kids’ space on Sunday night.
The best outcome can be determined with another question: one of priority. Which group is more important and should have the room designed around them? Our advice is to design the space for the children and commit to the theming that you want. Adults can use a children’s room just fine. Really, the only accommodation they need is bigger chairs. If you want a genuinely special children’s space, build it as one and let the adults borrow it during the week.
The reverse is also true. If the adult space is the priority, and the room needs to read as a grown-up gathering space most of the time, then design it for the adults. In that case, plan on setting up and tearing down props or decorations to make the room feel kid-friendly when children use it. Either approach can work. The key in church design is deciding up front who the room belongs to, rather than trying to split the difference and satisfy no one.
Making It Theirs: Church Design for Tweens and Teens
Another question we received: how do you make a space appealing to tweens and teens who want a room that feels like their own?
Tweens and teens are, in some ways, the easiest age group to design for because they are adaptable. They do not need anything elaborate to feel ownership over a space. They just need to be able to call it theirs. The challenge occurs when that space also has to serve other groups. A shared, multi-use room does not give teens the freedom to, say, write on a wall, hang their own decorations, or otherwise make lasting changes, and that limitation is a real design hurdle.
One solution we can recommend in this situation is environmental projection. Projectors are mounted around the room, and the walls themselves stay blank. From there, a computer can project a different look onto those walls, depending on who is using the space that day: a children’s theme, a teen theme, or an adult feel, all without any permanent graphics. The budget that might otherwise go toward paint, murals, or built-in décor instead goes toward the technology that makes this flexibility possible.
It is worth being honest about the tradeoff. Environmental projection is a technology investment, and it requires someone on staff or on a volunteer team who knows how to run it and keep it updated. Used in the right situation, it works very well. It is not something to treat as an afterthought, since it comes with real cost and a learning curve attached.
Keep Asking Questions
Questions like these are one reason why we host i3 webinars. Church design and church building decisions get better when church leaders have a place to ask what is actually on their minds. We host i3 webinars on a wide range of topics related to church design and church building. You can see what is coming up and sign up on our website.