The St. Sarkis Armenian church in Carrollton (Texas) is a new symbol of both architectural and cultural importance. It was designed to offer a place of worship for the Armenian community in the district of Dallas, as well as acting as a commemorative monument for the 1.5 million victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide. St. Sarkis was designed by the award-winning New York architect David Hotson, along with his historical partner architect Stepan Terzyan, and inspired by Saint Hripsime Church, which dates back to 618 AD – an emblem of the resistance and perseverance of this population – located near today’s Armenian capital, Yerevan.

The Saint Sarkis Community Center is a campus of three buildings on a five-acre site: access to the church is through a shady courtyard between the buildings, which host a sports facility and a parish hall housing the secretariat, Sunday school, reception room and large meeting room.

The courtyard floor, paved with Fjord surfaces by Fiandre, leads visitors over a reflecting pool below a round window, also tiled with the same ceramic slabs fixed to the intrados, framing a view of the church cupola beyond. In the hot summer months, the breeze channels through the shady courtyard and, crossing the pool, offers cool air for the visitors entering the green area surrounding the church.

The St. Sarkis project looks both to the future and the past, blending the ancient artistic traditions of Armenia, the world’s first Christian country, with pioneering digital design and manufacturing technologies. The centrepiece of the intervention, and a brilliant example of contemporary innovation, is the church façade: covered in ceramic slabs with a pattern reproduced with ultra-high resolution, seen from a distance it reproduces a traditional Armenian cross, the “tree of life”. As you gradually approach the façade, the overall drawing dissolves into 1.5 million tiny icons, or pixels, generated by a digital screen to make each one unique, like the victims of this historical atrocity.