St. Bruno Catholic Church

Heaven Sent

Project team gives church a home

By Jennifer Pfaff

The St. Bruno Catholic Church addition found life when two seemingly divergent paths intersected.

The church asked two things of Plunkett Raysich Architects LLP when the firm started work on the design, said John Holz, senior project designer with Plunkett Raysich. First, the church wanted its addition to keep in mind the setting of the Kettle Moraine Forest. Second, it wanted the design to reflect the qualities of the church’s patron saint.

“St. Bruno was a monk and lived a life of solitude,” Holz said. “There is a very humble quality we were looking for.”

The architect set to work melding the two requests as it added 21,500 square feet to an existing church and school building in Dousman. The former church space is to be converted for other uses, and the addition became a new and larger worship space.

“We met the goal with the low-brick forms, very earthbound and simple,” Holz said. “We created these brick forms, and soaring from them are branching trees.

Together they create a dignified worship space. It is both humble and uplifting.”

The trees in this spiritual forest are evoked with wide-flange steel columns painted a neutral shade and branching out to carry the canopy overhead. Each branching effect begins at a different height.

Overhead is a latticework of glue-laminate beams, erected by construction manager The Bentley Company. The exposed roof system forms the forest canopy, and six large dormer windows bathe the 650-seat worship space in natural light.


	Project Name: St. Bruno Catholic Church Location: Dousman Submitting Companies: Plunkett Raysich Architects LLP, Milwaukee, and The Bentley Company, Milwaukee Construction Manager: The Bentley Company Architect: Plunkett Raysich Architects LLP Engineers: Komp Gilomen Engineering Inc., Milwaukee, structural engineer; FLM Engineering Inc., Cedarburg, plumbing and HVAC engineer; Czarnecki Engineering Inc., Pewaukee, electrical engineer Owner: St. Bruno Parish, Dousman Project Cost: $4.08 million Project Size: 21,500 square feet Start Date: November 2003 Completion Date: February 2005

Working with the timbers was a challenge for Bentley.

“Some of these beams were 60 to 70 feet long,” said Gordon Corrus, Bentley’s vice president and senior project manager. “The technique is different than with brick and blocks. It’s like setting up Tinker Toys. If you knock one down, it’s a chain effect.”

It took six weeks to put the exposed roof system in place so it could be covered with wood decking and a champagne-colored, standing-seam roof.

The result of the extra work, however, is a design true to the congregation’s dual goals.

“All churches care about how a church meets its worship needs, how it fits on the site,” Holz said. “This church cared about that as well, but it went beyond, in a very meaningful way, to make sure the building reflects the qualities of its patron saint.”

But the saint’s history isn’t the only bit of the past carrying the church into the future.

Bentley salvaged and restored the bell from St. Bruno’s original 1890s building, still standing a short distance away from the new church. It was refurbished, cleaned and set in a new bell tower. Although St. Bruno now lays claim to an electronic carillon as well, the original bell can still be rung.

The bell is a physical connection to the parish’s past members and traditions.

“When you build a new church, you are building upon something else,” Holz said. “The church is really the people, and the volume we build must respond to them.”

This newest worship space involved the church’s people in every step of construction, from setting architectural goals to dedicating the site.

“When we did the groundbreaking ceremony in 2003, we pinpointed the [future] location of the altar in the church,” Corrus said. “We dug a hole there and people put in rocks with their names on them.”

St. Bruno’s leaders realized that the church’s foundation is based on the past and present, but they also understood they needed to prepare for future members as the Dousman area grows.

That created another architectural problem, Holz said. The church had to look complete in its current state even though plans exist for expanding the building to seat 1,100 parishioners.

“It couldn’t look like it was waiting for something,” he said.

The project was the result of many voices and a solid commitment from the owners, Holz said.

“The church will often want to have a shrine or alcove for its patron saint, but to actually build into the architecture the quality or historical background of a patron saint is a very dramatic goal,” he said. “This client had great vision, and we were able to translate that into a wonderful project.”