Magallanes Church
- Formally known as the Parish Church of St. Alphonsus.
- The Magallanes Church was built in 1968 and consumed by fire in September 2004.
- The church was rebuilt by Architect Dominic Galicia, preserving the concrete structure that survived the fire while adding a soaring roof that increased the height from six meters to 28 meters.
- With a new mezzanine, seating also increase from 300 to 900. The new structure served as a symbol of a community transforming tragedy into grace.
- In 1968, Architect Leandro Locsin designed an 800-square-meter parish church that was intimate and low, with an interior that was dark. The plan was a perfect square, 28 meters each side, with a four-meter-high ceiling that was flat. The central aisle ran along the diagonal of the square. Marching along the perimeter were 28 concrete buttresses four meters tall, which were wide at the base and narrow at the top. They seemed to support a massive roof slab, which was actually a tall parapet wall that shielded the corrugated metal roof.
- When fire destroyed the building, only the 28 buttresses remained. After much deliberation, the parish decided that it would be more economical and symbolically pithy to salvage the buttresses, rather than demolish them and start from scratch.
- The new structure consists of 13 roof vaults resting on new composite columns. The central roof vault, eight meters wide, travels the longest distance, which is the diagonal of the square plan, to a height of 28 meters.
- Independent roof vaults, 4 1/2 meters wide, ascend to it on either side, beginning at 11 meters from ground level, then 14 meters, 16 meters, 18 meters, 21 meters, and 25 meters, like the 12 apostles who accompanied Jesus Christ.
- The vaults are thin-shell concrete membranes clad in unglazed clay tiles, which help reduce heat gain.
- The vaults are separated by clear glass windows, which, in the upper reaches of the building, are also operable.
- The 28 buttresses, originally designed for aesthetic effect, were hollow. They were filled with concrete to fulfill a new structural purpose of providing lateral support to the new composite columns that carry the roof vaults.
- The goal is a sustainable building that by its architecture minimizes its waste of materials and dependence on fossil fuels.
