For Cohen, this conundrum was a blessing in disguise. “We were very pleased about the challenges posed by the site,” he says, “because they permitted us to design a coherent, architecturally autonomous sanctuary.” The extension takes the form of two 53-foot-tall scrolls wrapping around each other to create an oval space. The idea of the scrolled surface is the project’s unifying architectural language. An unfurling 19-foot-tall wall leads up to the double-height sanctuary, both to hide the existing brick building and to establish a lobby where the old and new meet. There is an entrance at one end of this space for those arriving by car and one at the other for the few who observe the Orthodox tradition of walking to Shabbat services.

A tall furling wall conceals the view of the existing school building (above), leading to the scrolled sanctuary extension (top of page). Photo © Kendall McCaugherty, click to enlarge.

Near the parking entrance, the long wall wraps around to form the Memorial Garden. Photos © Kendall McCaugherty

A column in the center of the lobby supports the mezzanine in the sanctuary, which, in addition to a flexible seating plan, helps accommodate the holiday overflow. The prominence and singularity of this structural member, which is clad in walnut and slips through an opening in the ceiling, reads as a theoretically loaded gesture that taps into discourse—from Vitruvius to Robert Venturi—on architectural semiotics. In this context, the column also serves symbolically as one of the eitz chayim (wood rollers at the end of a Torah scroll) around which the procession into the synagogue unfurls.

1

A lone column in the lobby supports a mezzanine for overflow seating (1), which is also accommodated by flexible seating in the sanctuary (2). Photo © Kendall McCaugherty

2

In the main sanctuary, one of the building’s tilting, unraveling scrolls anchors the bimah (stage area), becoming a light cannon—dark and intimate during the day but illuminated at night—and serving as what could be called a side chapel, where the rabbi can meet with families before a bar/bat mitzvah or pray a silent Amidah. The other scroll houses a stair, accessible from the lobby, leading to the mezzanine. Around the space are rectangular embrasures, punched into the curving surfaces and lined in walnut inscribed with excerpts from the Torah. For security reasons—there was a fatal neo-Nazi shooting at a nearby Jewish community center in 2014—the glazing within these deep-set openings is entirely above head height.

The arc, where the Torah scrolls are held, sits in the center of the bimah. Photo © Kendall McCaugherty

The scrolled forms function as light cannons. Photo © Kendall McCaugherty

If the interior is an architecture parlante for studying the Torah, the exterior is a lesson in geometry. Clad in corrugated galvanized siding, which, according to Cohen, “evokes the agricultural structures you might see in Kansas,” the scrolled forms are achieved by bending the ruled material along its grain. The result is that the building’s concave and convex curves, each composed as a developable surface, splice into each other such that the grooves of the metal misalign and make the distinct shapes legible. “The building is smoothly continuous,” Cohen notes, “but, owing to its geometry, these lines between sections of cladding inscribe another organization onto the architecture.”

3

The mezzanine, which helps accommodate holiday overflow (3), sweeps around the sanctuary and seamlessly transitions into the light cannon (4). Photos © Kendall McCaugherty

4

All successful buildings manage the exigencies of a particular site, cost constraints, client demands, and construction challenges. Exemplary ones also contend with architecture’s disciplinary legacy and its increasing environmental responsibilities, all while exhibiting a material and compositional finesse. Congregation Beth Shalom may not fulfill every one of these criteria, but, in this grassy suburban field, Cohen has nevertheless achieved something remarkable, setting the building apart from being merely successful. The architects have realized a rare fusion of theoretical ambitions with the gritty realities of a complex building.

Images courtesy Preston Scott Cohen, Inc.