Arlington Temple United Methodist Church

Designed in collaboration with Shalom Baranes Associates Architects, the new Arlington Temple United Methodist Church replaces an iconic church building built over a gas station at the corner of N. Fort Myer Drive and N. Nash Street. The vibrant new facility is part of the transformation of the Ames Center, a legacy office building in Rosslyn, Virginia. The currently planned 30-story high-rise development towers over a mixed-use base that includes retail and commercial uses with the church and gas station rebuilt in the same location.

The new church form is a geometrically shaped volume that overhangs the first level at the site’s northernmost point. Here, a large transparent portal window opens to the intersection and features the church’s iconic cross. The massing and articulation inflect to the main entry at Nash, which is accessed from a more intimate ground-level entrance feature. The interior spaces, designed by LeMay Erickson Willcox Architects, build upon this inflection by pronouncing the entrance experience and the interior path along the Nash Street windows. This interior path includes a high-volume entrance, a monumental stair to a grand narthex and the primary entrance of the dynamic sanctuary space with a prominent view of the iconic cross. The entirety of this grand path and the primary interior spaces respond thoughtfully to the organic architecture of the base building and are designed to reflect the clean modern design aesthetic of the exterior envelope.