The Shared Developmental Trajectory of Megachurches and Corporate America

"The midcentury embrace of car-friendly, arcadian settings for work and worship drew on a sense of the uprightness of the rural that had been cultivated by prominent Americans from Thomas Jefferson to William Jennings Bryan. Even after Schuller's congregation moved into a new building on the same site in 1961, it maintained its connection to the drive-in church: Richard Neutra, its architect, made the signature feature a floor-to-ceiling glass wall with panels that slid open during services, merging the sanctuary with the parking lot outside, giving worshipers in cars and pews an equal view of the pulpit.

A similar aesthetic emerged in office design. The Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, wishing to move away from downtown Hartford in order to expand its headquarters, hired Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to design a new structure in the idyllic suburb of Bloomfield. The result was a low, crystalline block set on two hundred acres of farmland."