Pohutukawa Church — Owen's Portfolio

Owen’s Portfolio

Owen Champness
owen@owenchampness.com
LinkedIn

Hi! I’m Owen. I’m an Architectural Engineering student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. I am passionate about creating affordable housing through volunteering and thermal insulation and its effect on the environment. I have experience in AutoCAD, SketchUP and Revit. I volunteer for Engineers Without Borders, in particular the WATurbine team.

In my free time, I really like coffee. I like light roasted beans and making pourovers; I find the experience quite meditative. I also play a lot of rhythm games, specifically osu!. I host a multitude of tournaments for that game, as well as being a pretty solid player if I do say so myself. Apart from that, I listen to a lot of music. My favourite genres to listen to are hyper-pop, indie rock, and dariacore.

CV

Pohutukawa ChurchDOC 0003

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Pohutukawa Church
DOC 0002

 Publisher: Studio Polis Design
 Job: Architectural Drafting & Modeling Assistant @ Studio Polis
 Tools: Rhino3D
 Credits: Jeremy Bailey, Owen Champness

DESCRIPTION

Inspired by the coastal landscape of New Zealand, Pohutukawa Church explores how architecture can create a contemplative spiritual environment that is deeply rooted in its natural context. Originally developed as a competition entry, the project investigates the relationship between built form, landscape, and atmosphere, using an open concept and material expression to evoke a sense of calm, reflection, and connection to place.

The space is equipped with a large, open nave, organizing the pews in a semi-circular shape allowing every member to properly see the altar. Above the nave, there is a choir which has many seats and a pipe organ at the back allowing for beautiful music to compliment the atmosphere. Once you walk in through the side enterances, you are greeted with a nice open room where you can look above you and see the pipe organ on display. At the northern-most part of the church, there is the main enterance where you can grab a drink at the cafe and also go to the washroom to the east. Going up the spiral stairs, you enter the let-area where events happen, and the office of the bishop.

This phase of the project focused on redevelopping a previously created drawing set due to it lacking detail, missing files and not meeting the studio’s standards. Working with the existing files and images from the drawing competition, I worked on turning the project into a more finalized format suitable for showing to clients. I created a full drawing set including plans, elevations and sections and touched up the model. Technical development was carried out using primarily Rhino3D to ensure accuracy between the drawing set and the model.

Through this process of refinement and visualization, Pohutukawa Church evolves from a conceptual competition proposal into a more fully realized architectural project. The work demonstrates the importance of clarity in representation, as well as the role of iteration in bridging the gap between early design ideas and client-ready presentations, while maintaining the integrity of the original vision.