Description

Although the site lies in one of the largest cities in Arizona – Scottsdale numbers 220,000 inhabitants – one’s first impression is of desert. The complex with its tight arrangement of small streets and courtyards is modelled on ancient Middle East Jewish settlements. The design of the complex encompasses a lecture and assembly hall, the Temple Kol Ami, a wedding chapel, a children’s nursery, religious school, library and offices. Presenting a closed and straight face to the west, and an open and undulating face to the east, the complex has a total length of 177 metres. These ambitious plans were later revised by the client and as yet only a part of the building to the south has been realised: the lecture and assembly hall – which now serves as the synagogue – as well as two low parallel wings with classrooms. Resembling small dwellings but without being kitschy, each of these is accessed via an interior courtyard and protected against the heat of the sun by undulating canopies made of corrugated plexiglass.

Tilted at an angle of 7 degrees and with a Richard Serra-inspired shallow curve, the east side of the complex presents a fortress-like wall. The 6.7 metre high wall is interrupted only once by a projecting metal plane that marks the point where the shrine containing the Torah rolls stands. The entrance to the synagogue is positioned on one side to the north. The sparse interior is not unlike that of a university lecture hall and is illuminated by a broad strip along the central west-east axis between the two butterfly roofs as well as a band of windows on the north side. Here one can look out onto an art garden featuring a plethora of desert flora.

All buildings are predominantly constructed out of economic building materials, which are cleverly used to great effect. Inside and out, the walls are made of standardised rough concrete blockwork with dimensions of 40.5 by 20.25 by 20.25 centimetres. Laid entirely in stretcher bond, the wall exhibits a subtle relief-like texture: the blockwork has a haphazard appearance, projecting irregularly as if carelessly laid. The granular texture and colour of the masonry – which changes from grey to yellow and from red to brown with the incident light – looks like it were the work of lay-people rather than that of a master’s hand.

Although reminiscent of the work of Bruce Goff and Paolo Soleri, the building in Scottsdale is characterised less by its eccentric forms or its aesthetic references to synagogue architecture of the U.S. and Europe, and more by pragmatic and practical considerations. The Temple Kol Ami serves as a “bet ha knesset”, a house of assembly, as a “bet ha tefillah”, a house of prayer and as a “bet ha midrash”, a house of study. In short, despite the lack of sacred aura in its interior, it is a synagogue through and through.

The Architectural Review, no. 11/1997, p. 54- | L’Architecture d’Au­jourd’hui, no. 307/1996, pp. 92- | L’Architettura Cronache e Storia, no. 485/1996, pp. 158- | Cerver, Francisco Asensio: Zeitgenössische Architektur, (n.p.) Königswinter 2005, pp. 372- | Gruber, Samuel D.: American Synagogues. A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community, New York 2003, pp. 196-, p. 234 | Jodidio, Philip: Building a New Millennium, Cologne 1999, pp. 120- | Lotus International, no. 105/2000, p. 96- | Pearman, Hugh: Contemporary World Architecture, London 1998, pp. 140- | Progressive Architecture, no. 7/1995, p. 86 | Sachs, Angeli, Voolen, Edward van (Ed.): Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, Munich 2004, pp. 108-

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Originally published in: Rudolf Stegers, Sacred Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2008.