The Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, with a significant history, was burnt in a fire in 2016, with only the perimeter limestone walls remaining. The rapid changes around its neighborhood Bronzeville have raised various financial, legal and preservation issues. Yet the site, both an architectural landmark, and the birthplace of gospel music, serves as a spiritual tie for its religious community, and calls for a reconnection.

This proposal is a negotiation between ruins that carry cultural meanings, and the new design with evolving interests; between threshold and memories. With steel structures as the unified support system throughout, patterned glass and local bricks were used reversely as exterior and interior materials, in the old and new church. landscapes and gardens were provided as additional meditation spaces, together with the patterned glasses, these immersive diffused light experience corresponds to the organic nature, as conceptualized by Louis Sullivan.