Centerbrook Architects and Planners

Park East Synagogue - Pepper Pike, Ohio

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Centerbrook Architects and Planners
Fotos: Scott Frances

Texto original en inglés::

This new synagogue incorporates a sanctuary, school, and library. It serves as a new East Campus for the expanding congregation of the renowned Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights, designed by Eric Mendelsohn in 1950. Like its older sibling, it offers a community center for nearby congregants.

The building is a simple steel frame box clad in a stick and panel mosaic of copper. Three large organic shapes burst from the box - a Jerusalem stone sanctuary and two great copper canopies leading to a two-story lobby. These two entrances of equal importance - one for the school, the other for the sanctuary, library, and offices - bend towards each other in a gesture of welcome and blessing.

The lobby is the central spine of the building. The school wing is to the east, the library and offices are to the west, and the community center and sanctuary are the center hub.

The sanctuary is surrounded inside and out by gently curving, monumental stone walls. The stone is coursed in large horizontal bands reminiscent of primordial construction of early Jerusalem temples. Chapel daylight comes indirectly from four edges, giving it a soft glow for quietude and solace.

While this building is straightforward for the sake of economy, its age-old materials and extraordinary light make it a sacred place.