2003 Faith & Form Magazine Religious Architecture Award

This synagogue for a suburban Boston congregation includes a 250-seat sanctuary, a library/chapel for smaller services, eight classrooms, support offices, and a function room for receptions with kosher kitchen.

The site and building have been composed to provide proper orientation for religious worship while maximizing the strengths of the site’s natural features, which include two mature stands of pine trees and a gently sloping lawn. The building’s shape was developed to suggest a hierarchy of volumes, leading the eye to the most sacred space within: the sanctuary. A continuous clerestory provides natural light, and the space intimately envelops the congregation seated in concentric pews, while offering select views to the wooded outdoors. The exterior, clad primarily in wood, represents a contemporary aesthetic, while deriving many of its forms from a variety of historical precedents