Red Mountain Church had an old parking area at its front entrance, with a sloping asphalt surface that was both unwelcoming and unusable. Our solution provides new outdoor space that both hosts events and provides breathing space for the surrounding neighborhood.

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The Avon Theater was built in 1928, and the site of the courtyard was perhaps intended for additional retail shop space to continue across the volume of the theater, but in the depression years that followed that intent remained unrealized. The Theater was renovated in 2007 (designed while a part of the Garrison Barrett Group) to provide a space for Red Mountain Church as a place for worship as well as an event space for the community. When this portion of the project was completed, the parking area out front remained with the intent of its removal in the future to make way for outdoor space.

The new Courtyard provides a terrace of both scored concrete and crushed limestone. Steps from the sidewalk are angled to align with the odd geometry of the site and begin to re-orient views back to the theater entrance. Low wood screen walls were installed above the concrete site walls in order to give a measure of separation between the courtyard space and the public sidewalk. Two benches are built into these screen walls for informal seating. 

The Avon Theater is in the middle of the Lakeview Entertainment District, home to many restaurants & bars and is located between the downtown district of Birmingham, the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and several urban residential neighborhoods. Across the street from the Courtyard is the 29Seven project, a mixed use building with apartments and restaurants. With the completion of the Avon Courtyard, an informal public space is added to the growing and thriving District. The Courtyard also completes the streetscape on its particular block, removing these couple parking spaces and bringing life to a space that was too long idle.

In 2016, this project received a Merit Award from the Birmingham Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture.

Completion Date

2015 | 1,400 SF

Project Team

General Contractor:
Locke General Contractors