The design of the Northern Chesapeake Unitarian Universalist Society's new facility incorporated a number of values which are often important to the Unitarian Universalists. The building is intended to be visible from surrounding roads, but set easily into both its built and natural context. The site landscape theme is integral to the building. One enters the site on an axis with trees, and then arrives in the parking lot which is screened from the building with plantings. A short stroll through these plantings through the front door provides an appropriate psychological transition to a place of congregation and worship. The building is characterized by a contrast between the tower and the fireplace. Both of these elements provide vertical accents to the scheme. However, the tower provides indirect light into the meeting room suggesting transcendence and the inconceivable vastness of the sky. The fireplace suggests earth-centered traditions involving fire, the hearth and earth-rootedness. Intermediate to these elements is the horizontal plane occupied by the congregation, from which they are in intimate contact with tangible nature directly outside.