Nestled at the center of the University of Dallas’s small campus lies the Church of the Incarnation, mostly unchanged since it was completed in 1985. Surrounded primarily by brick, midcentury buildings designed by O’Neil Ford, the church invokes historical precedent and tradition through its bold design.
The University of Dallas, a small, Catholic liberal arts college established in 1956, is currently home to 1,447 undergraduate and 1,042 graduate students. It is located in Irving, with a core curriculum of 19 classes taken by all undergraduates that is based upon a classical education.
When the university approached husband-and-wife architect team Duane and Jane Landry to design a new chapel, they sought a design with an emphasis on community rather than a particular program or style. The school’s original chapel, the Thomas Aquinas Chapel, with a capacity of only 80, no longer served the growing student body. Masses were being held in the school’s auditorium and gym. Still, there was a desire for the church to retain the intimacy of that original space, even if it now needed to seat 500.
The directive of the building committee was for the space to “have about it a sense of the special place set apart, a sacred space where the community finds unity in the celebration of the mysteries of faith.” Bearing these goals in mind, along with the restrictions of the site—the committee selected a site at the center of campus with many trees—the Landrys decided on a round shape for the chapel, and this decision informed many of the building’s most enduring features. “It was important to retain its character by preserving as many of the trees as possible,” says Jane Landry, FAIA. “This was aided by keeping the footprint of the church to a minimum. In practical terms, a circle provides the greatest amount of square footage in a given perimeter.”
The Landrys traveled to Rome, seeking inspiration and finding it at Santo Stefano Rotondo. Built in the fifth century, it was the first circular church in Rome and provided Catholic precedent for the Landrys to draw from. But designing a circular church posed challenges. The Landrys decided to locate the altar off-center by 90 degrees along a north-south axis instead of placing it directly in the middle of the worship space. This change created a path for users around the processional space. The circular form is topped by a stair-stepped roof that allows light to enter the church’s discrete spaces. The church’s baptismal font and Eucharist chapel are both formed by four freestanding columns. The Eucharist chapel, unlike the sanctuary, is enclosed, providing a private space for contemplation.
Constructed from brick, the materials of the church intentionally mirror those of the campus’s surrounding buildings. While the walls of the sanctuary are mostly clad in striking wood paneling, many of the church’s walls and the church’s floor are unadorned brick. Even the bottoms of the space’s columns are lined with thin Roman brick, echoing their design inspiration.
“The building is truthful to the nature of the materials from which it is constructed: concrete, brick, wood, and steel, with elements of copper,” describes Landry. “All are used with such variation that they are both structure and fabric of the details throughout the building, capable of bearing the weight of mystery and reverence of the liturgy.”
Returning to the original brief, the furnishing of the chapel became a community project. An art professor, Lyle Novinski, designed the altar, the ambo, and the chairs. The head of the school’s sculpture department, Heri Bert Bartscht, crafted the church’s crucifix, its statue of St. Michael, and the stations of the cross. Issac Maxwell, one of O’Neil Ford’s collaborators, designed large, hanging brass chandeliers, candelabras, and planters. The brass chandeliers are particularly distinctive, detailed with perforations that mark the church as uniquely Texan and set it apart from its traditional Roman inspiration. “His amazing works of art give light, pattern, and liveliness to the simplicity of the church,” says Landry.
“It was much different than any other church in Dallas,” described Monsignor Don Fischer, who served as University of Dallas chaplain during the 1980s. “This church reflects the radicalness of the changes of the church at the time.” Dr. Kathryn Holliday, director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture, said, “Of all the campus chapels in north Texas, it most fully embraces abstraction and breaks away from traditional worship spaces, creating a humble and warmly contemplative sanctuary from the outside world.”
Much like the resulting church, the Landrys themselves have been quietly revolutionary. Beginning their own firm as husband-and-wife proprietors in 1964, they have built a thoughtful practice centered on ecclesiastical buildings and community. In 1988, they became the first couple to submit a joint application for fellowship, and Jane was the first woman elevated to fellow in the AIA Dallas chapter. AIA Dallas honored the Landrys with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.
The purpose of the Texas Society of Architects’ 25-Year Award is to honor architecture of enduring significance. The Church of the Incarnation is certainly that, a landmark work by pioneering local architects that has stood almost entirely unchanged for nearly 40 years. Mark Lamster, architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News, described it as exemplifying “a design intelligence that is remarkable and deeply humane.” Both rigorously traditional and strikingly modern, it carves out a distinctive place in the landscape of ecclesiastical buildings in Texas. “For Duane and myself,” says Landry, “it was the fulfilling of a long-held desire to design places of worship, and from that time forward we concentrated our practice in religious architecture. Moreover, the experience made clear the value of liturgical art created specifically for a worshiping community.”
Alyssa Morris is a freelance writer based in Austin.