Description

For those acquainted with the history of urban development, the name “Springwall” – the address of the Jewish Congregation – already provides a clue to the location of the community centre. The building is situated on the northeastern edge of the old town of Duisburg. Along a road once occupied by the city wall, the building extends a row of plain houses before fanning out in a broad arc from west to east. Its plan is the shape of a segment of a circle – between an eighth and a quarter of a circle – and points towards an artificially created park from which the view extends northwards out over a canal and the inner harbour. One can imagine the development of the design: the first step involved a series of semicircular arcs and radii with a common centre point. In the second step, contours were added to the radii and sectors. In the third, a structure of five portals radiating outwards were drawn, four of which took the form of double-walled concrete slabs or frames, with rendered buildings spanning between them. These buildings, together with the ends of two of the portals, define small courtyards. The synagogue faces due east, the pointed end of its wedge shape extending into the park. The synagogue as the centre of the centre is emphasised by black slate cladding, a stark contrast to the concrete and plaster employed elsewhere.

The building’s chaotic appearance is only momentary. In reality it is transparent, permeable and continuous. The radiating portals serve as circulation. The spaces between the fanning walls accommodate a series of functions: a multi-purpose hall and kitchen on the ground level between the first and third portals, with two flats above; between the third and fourth portals, the entrance hall with glazed façades to the north and south; between the fourth and fifth portal, the synagogue and the offices and classrooms.

Arriving from the “Springwall”, the entrance leads beneath a cantilevered building, the caretaker’s dwelling, into a courtyard and the entrance hall. The doors of the synagogue open to the right. The bright white space, illuminated from above and from the side, has seats made of maple and tapers towards the rear. The platform and its sacred objects are clad in a stone imported from Jerusalem. Sometimes red, sometimes brown, the slabs have a haphazard irregular and rough-hewn form. The two towers to the left and right of the Torah look as if they had been made by Cyclops from the Levant. The archaic or even primitive appearance is intentional.

As with the architect’s other buildings, the Jewish Community Centre unites the often paradoxical qualities of the rational with the contextual and the metaphorical to form a beautiful whole. The plan of the building resembles an open book or an open hand. The Hebrew word for “hand” is also the Hebrew word for “memory”. While the park with its ruins and relicts calls to mind the age of industrialisation, the Jewish Community Centre in Duisburg is more than just a memorial. It provides a place for Judaism to thrive.

Architecture, no. 11/1999, pp. 98- | Architektur Aktuell, no. 232/1999, pp. 44- | L’Architettura Cronache e Storia, no. 535/2000, pp. 282- | Bauwelt, no. 29/1999, cover, p. 1590- | Beton Prisma, no. 79/2001, cover, pp. 1- | Brockhaus, Christoph (Ed.): Stadtbild Duisburg. Identität, Wandel und Vision, exhibition catalogue, Duisburg 1999, pp. 115- | Casabella, no. 675/2000, pp. 44- | Centrum. Jahrbuch Architektur und Stadt 1999-2000, Basel 2000, pp. 166- | Domus, no. 823/2000, pp. 40- | Frankfurter Allgemeine, 24. 6. 1999, p. 49 | Korn, Salomon: Geteilte Erinnerung. Beiträge zur ›deutsch-jüdischen‹ Gegenwart, Berlin 1999, pp. 65- | Kunst und Kirche, no. 4/1999, pp. 240- and no. 4/2001, p. 222, pp. 238- | Mewes, Claus (Ed.): Zvi Hecker. Architektur ist Landschaft, exhibition catalogue, Hamburg and Berlin 1997, p. 1, pp. 16- | Das Münster, no. 3/1999, pp. 254- | Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Internationale Ausgabe, 26./27. 6. 1999, p. 49 | The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture, Comprehensive Edition, London 2004, p. 457 | Richardson, Phyllis: New Sacred Architecture, London 2004, pp. 34- | Sachs, Angeli, Voolen, Edward van (Ed.): Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, Munich 2004, pp. 116- | Wettbewerbe Aktuell, no. 8/1996, pp. 77- and no. 11/1999, pp. 91-

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