Sacred Heart University - Master Plan and Chapel Design Elke Berger as Employee/Principal at Sasaki Assoc.Inc.

In 2003, Sasaki Assoc. Inc. was commissioned to prepare a Master Plan for the Catholic University of Sacred Heart, which had just evolved from a high school to a university.
The Master Plan created a sequence of public plazas and open spaces through intentional densification in the campus core area, with the Quadrangle, essential to American campuses, as the green center. The essential academic, social, and spiritual functions of the campus are clustered around this grassy field. Following the master plan, Sasaki was commissioned to work with an interdisciplinary planning team to realize the first component of the new campus center: the campus church, Chapel of the Holy Spirit with its surrounding open spaces and quadrangle. The client wanted the building to have associations with Old Testament imagery, such as the nomadic tent and scriptural tablets, as well as a division into church, chapel, and narthex. The surrounding open spaces respond to this staggering:
there is a generous plaza associated with the narthex for public functions outside the church with flexible, custom-designed seating elements, and a small, retreat-like garden in the shade of walls and trees for meditative moments in smaller groups. While the main façade of the church faces the Quad, the back is embedded in a newly planted grove of large deciduous trees of Northeast American provenance.