B’NAI ISRAEL SYNAGOGUE

From the outside a modest, composition of nested boxes, this reform synagogue extends this building typology’s embrace of modernism, unfolding it into an unexpected, if not otherworldly, experience on the interior.  The exterior is a foil to the mundane institutional buildings of the Mayo Clinic that surround it, providing some focused views to the outside and a raised garden for the display of Sukkot and other events. Absent an overt visual connection to an exterior landscape, the interior instead builds on light as its primary visual experience. 

A broadhouse plan in the sanctuary places worshipers close to the activity of the bimah and further emphasizes the prominence of the East-facing Ark wall. A rooftop light monitor washes daylight across the East wall behind a layered screen of translucent panels dividing a brilliantly-lit sacred space behind the screen (housing the sacred texts of the Torah) and the more profane space of the sanctuary proper. Taking inspiration from the incompleteness of Hebrew Script as written in the Torah, the panels of the Ark wall are arranged in an abstract pattern abstracted from Hebrew letterform. The ark itself reinterprets fuller segments of these shapes in waterjet-cut, translucent onyx, bridging the threshold between light and being.

With HGA Architects and Engineers / Joan Soranno FAIA, Design Principal and John Cook FAIA, Project Architect

Rochester, Minnesota USA

Photography: Michael Moran

Honor Award for Architecture, AIA Minnesota

Merit Award, AIA/Interfaith Forum on Religious Architecture (National)

Honor Award, Chicago Athenaeum