Grace Auburn Church Renovation

Grace Auburn Church is a 48,797-square-foot worship and community facility set within a former commercial warehouse in Auburn, Alabama. The church purchased the metal building with a clear goal to renovate it into a permanent space for their congregation to worship and gather.

The renovation centers on a ground-floor auditorium and a lobby of equal size, with a worship mezzanine above. The main floor seats over 850, and the mezzanine can accommodate more than two hundred additional guests. Opening a metal building to this scale required removing interior columns that ran through the gathering space. To accomplish the removal, six-foot-deep transfer trusses were set in place without disturbing the existing roof before the original columns were cut free.

The lobby is as large as the worship hall by design, built to hold the congregation before and after services where community takes shape. The interior leaves the structure exposed and relies on a simple palette of wood slats, dark paint, white walls, and daylight drawn into the worship space. The result is a worship space that rises well beyond its origins, where light, structure, and material come together to gather a growing congregation.