PlainJoe's project outside of Perth, Australia, called The Block, is home to True North Church and its mixed-use campus. The community project is largely financed through state lottery funds, and is another seven-day-a-week community site with playgrounds.
With creative roots deep in Disney Imagineering, Universal, and LegoLand, PlainJoe Studios understands the importance of storytelling in architectural design, including for churches.
Mel McGowan, the company’s co-founder and chief creative officer, spearheads PlainJoe Studios’ multi-disciplinary Spatial Storytelling approach to architectural design. This approach integrates master planning, conceptual development, architecture, interior and production design, graphics, wayfinding, and dimensional fabrication/installation to create spaces that tell unified stories to their users.
McGowan’s aesthetic fuses his background in film and design with a decade spent at the Walt Disney Co., plus the spirit and creativity of Disney’s original Imagineers, designers, and fabricators.
Church.Design recently sat down with McGowan to learn more about his approach to church design.
Church.Design: What's your role within PlainJoe Studios and how much work of your work is church projects?
McGowan: Probably half our work is in the nonprofit space. The other half is in the entertainment/corporate space. And my role as chief creative officer is to oversee our creative team, which is specifically focused on what we call ‘Spatial Storytelling.’
To reiterate, Spatial Storytelling is basically all the disciplines that are at Disney Imagineering, from architecture and master planning to interior design and graphics, all to create an integrated physical live experience. In this day and age, we are also creating virtual digital spaces that are consistent with this concept.
Disney has effectively created some of the top human attractions on the planet. Disney World is the top tourist destination for people, period, [and] Disneyland Paris outdraws the Eiffel Tower. There are certain things that are true to the design of these global destinations that we've been able to apply to ministry and to churches specifically over the last 20 years.
Church.Design: What is your design philosophy as it applies to church projects?
McGowan: Churches are pretty unique, and they go to the root of why we created the company. We've all got a commitment to evangelism and the Greatest Story Ever Told.
When we talk about spatial storytelling specifically, we definitely feel that we're called to handle the gospel story with a level of fear and trembling, and to be good stewards of it.
The Grand Project in downtown Escondido redeveloped a chunk of an urban block and turned it into a seven-day-a-week destination for art and creativity in the community. A renovated theatre and AV upgrade also serve portable New Vintage Church.
There's something pretty powerful about applying all the lessons learned from Disney and some of the world's leading gathering places and corporate storytellers, and bringing that to the ministry space.
Church.Design: How does this play out in your church design process?
McGowan: We have found that when we identify a unique storyline for an individual church design project, it guides all of the design decisions. It’s not just paint and color, but the entire master plan. It informs why we grade the site a certain way and why the church is laid out in a certain way, because we're really scripting that guest experience to tell a big story.
"We have found that when we identify a unique storyline for an individual church design project, it guides all of the design decisions. It’s not just paint and color, but the entire master plan." Mel McGowan, Co-Founder, Chief Creative Officer, PlainJoe Studios, Corona, CA
This story-centric approach is the first level. The next is to take a cultural anthropological approach, to think about the specific cultural, natural, and demographic influences of this particular setting.
We’re also considering the demographics of the folks that are going to be in our story, both those who belong to this congregation now and ‘the fish that haven't quite jumped into the aquarium.’ This approach has been called Architectural Evangelism in the past. It is the central focus of why we're making design decisions for a given church project.
Church.Design: Outline your approach by talking about some of your specific church projects.
McGowan: The vast majority of our projects these days are mixed-use designs.
A unique storyline for a site involves much more than paint and color, McGowan states, but a site's entire master plan. Shown here, True North in Perth, Australia.
[One] example that I love mentioning is a project outside of Perth, Australia. It’s called The Block, and it is one of these mixed-use campuses, a good chunk of which was actually paid for by state lottery funds. The Block is a seven-day-a-week site that serves all aspects of the community, particularly youth with playgrounds and so forth.
Church.Design: So how do you think that COVID-19 will affect church design?
McGowan: You know, I tend to steer clear of predictions. A lot of our approach is based on not so much trying to forecast the future, but by finding what we call ‘Timeless Principles of Storytelling and Sacred Spaces.' And so we're really trying to find timeless principles that aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
I think since people discovered fire, we've gathered around what we call ‘story circles,’ whether it's fireplaces or tribal powwows or sacred spaces. So I don't think that physical gathering for the purposes of sharing stories is going away.
This said, I can hypothetically say maybe we will see less bolted down seating, plus some flexibility in spacing and seating arrangements. But this is more for mixed-used purposes, where a room configured as an arena can quickly be changed into a cafe-type space in a matter of minutes.
