The Hurva - A Case Study by Morgan Raman

HURVA

SYNAGOGUE Project: Case Study Location: Jerusalem, Israel Developed by: Morgan Raman

01 Jerusalem, for centuries has been known as the seat of Judaism.

In the 18th century, the Askenazi Synagogue was built here, but demolished due to financial reasons. In the 19th century, a second synagogue was constructed on the same site resembling a Turkish mosque, which was again destroyed during the war with Jordan.

In the 20th century, Louis Kahn made three proposals for the Hurva.

Louis Kahn died on March 17, 1974; the Hurva was never built.

A case study of Kahn’s first proposal is presented here. It presents the Hurva as it would be been, if built in 1974, but within the current urban context of Jerusalem’s cultural fabric.

Hurva Synagogue | Case Study Jerusalem, Israel

A brief history The Ashkenazi synagogue was built in Jerusalem in the early eighteenth century with money borrowed from Arab lenders and was demolished in 1721 when the borrowers defaulted on the loan. A large second synagogue resembling a Turkish mosque was constructed on the same site in the nineteenth century following the practice of Jewish architecture resembling the local majority religion. It dominated the skyline of the Old City alongside the Dome of the Rock. In 1948, when the Jordanian army secured the Old City during the Arab–Israeli War, this structure was destroyed along with fifty-seven other Jewish religious structures. In 1967, following Israel regaining control of the Jewish quarter, discussions regarding the ruined remains of the Hurva in Jerusalem were resumed. The owners of

the Hurva site approached Architect Ram Karmi to build a new synagogue, which was promptly declined by Karmi who instead suggested that only Louis Kahn should undertake a project of such importance, challenge, and magnitude. Following this sequence of events, Karmi’s sister Ada and patron Yaacov Salomon travelled to Philadelphia to successfully convince Louis Kahn to accept the commission. The then Jerusalem mayor, Teddy Kollek, became Kahn’s client and major proponent of the Hurva Project.

Kahn presented three proposals for the Hurva - the first during 1967—68, the second in 1969, and the third during 1973—74. At the end of the Hurva design process, the focus was shifted to the development of a memorial garden built around

Tracing of the Hurva Synagogue, first proposal showing site plan of the Old Quarter in 1968.

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the ruins of the old Hurva. The completion of this garden was supposed to lead to the approval of Kahn’s design for the new Hurva.

On March 17, 1974, at 73 years of age, Louis Kahn died alone, of an apparent heart attack in a restroom in New York’s Penn Station as he was returning from a design trip to India for the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. His body was retrieved by the police and taken to the city morgue; a tentative identity was made based on his passport containing his office/home addresses in Philadelphia. The police sent a teletype to the Philadelphia police, but Kahn’s wife Esther Israeli was never notified. Concerned about no communication from Kahn, Esther placed calls to overseas locations and the NY police who informed her that his body was taken to the medical examiner’s office with notification to the Philadelphia police.

I studied the first proposal of Kahn’s Hurva in the course of a studio project during my graduate architecture program. A literature review was conducted, along with tracings from Kahn’s original drawings, and my hand sketches. A 50-scale physical form model of one-half of the Hurva was constructed to complement the 3D model, digital renditions of architectural sectional perspective drawings, and artistic renderings. A digital light analysis was performed to study the sun movement in Jerusalem during May 1974, and the impact of light movement within the Hurva over a sixteen-hour period from dawn to dusk. VR model development is currently underway to create a walkthrough experience in first person/third person renditions.

This precedent study is presented here as a part of the collection of select works in my Design Portfolio.

The Hurva was never built.

Precedents | Solomon’s Temple, Exeter Library

Kahn proposed the new Hurva consisting of two buildings - an outer set of sixteen pylons were designed to absorb the light/ heat of the sun, and protect the four hollow inner sanctuaries.

Stairs are located on each axis leading to the ambulatories that connect to each other through the pylon sides, similar to Fergusson’s reconstruction of the Solomon’s Temple. Like the Exeter Library, the outer walls are brick enclosing four hollow

concrete forms containing stairs and restrooms. The outer pylons at the Hurva are Jerusalem stone, which enclose the four hollow inner sanctuaries that occupy the inner corners of the building and provide seating/circulation to the balconies, revealing historical references and complex element layering of the building form.

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(far left) A significantly speculative reconstruction drawing of Solomon’s Temple from James Fergusson’s History of Architecture. (left) Philips Exeter Library, Exeter, New Hampshire by Kahn, 1965—72. Fourth floor plan. (above) The Hurva, first proposal. Roof plan. (above, middle) The Hurva, first proposal. Sectional mezzanine plan. (top left) The Hurva, first proposal. Sectional first-floor plan.

Divine Sanctity | Kahn’s thoughts

For Kahn, candlelight played an important role in Judaism, as an expression of the extension of the source of the religion and its practice. Therefore, in essence, the massive pylons with their carved niches create small chapels within themselves, an intimate place bringing a person closer to God. The massive stone pylons and the hollow inner sanctum work in tandem, like large leaves of a tree (beis midrash) allowing dynamic light filtration into the building through the day. It creates a visual illusion of levitation of the inner sanctum within the massive stone - making the visitor’s gaze raise, establishing a sense of magnanimity and a feeling of the presence of a higher power within the sacred space of the synagogue.

Form Development Kahn’s development of the Hurva is a complex arrangement of form elements. Presented here is a synthesis of the inner sanctum form that captures Kahn’s original design process based on proportionality manipulations of an ideal geometric shape - the square.

Starting with a square, executing a series of logical operations of cutting, multiplying, dividing, and scaling, the form of the inner sanctum is derived. Furthermore, its strategic arrangement develops a series of solid–void relationships, resulting in an infinite illusion when visualized in perspective view by the human eye. The illustrations of two and four inner sanctums in the middle on this page include scaled diagrams of people to demonstrate the magnanimity of the form compared to human scale, an exquisite solution for a religiuos building.

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Program The schema of the Hurva is visualized here in greater detail as sectional plans of the two floors as “ruins (pylons) wrapped around buildings (inner sanctum).” Entrance to the Hurva occurs at the four open corners, where one walks up and into the building through narrow gaps between the pylons upon which the magnanimity of the 10-foot square inner sanctum is revealed. From here, the building can be circumnavigated on the first floor by walking under the hollow columns. Stairs are placed on each axis leading to three balcony sections and upper level ambulatories that can be circumnavigated through the sides of the 16-foot square pylons.

In religious buildings, the feeling of the presence of a higher power within the structure is generally achieved through building size, incidence of natural light, applied lighting within the building, and the arrangement of access to various building programs. When deployed thoughtfully and strategically, they create a conscious sense of feeling small in an imagined presence of the divine. For example, in some religious structures, the deity is physically elevated, with programmatic elements forcing worshipers to walk in a downwardly direction to access the deity and raise their eyes to get a glimpse creating a sense of higher power and a natural supplication.

In Kahn’s Hurva, on the first floor, descending three sets of stairs, one on each axis, leads to a raised Bema (altar), which is placed at the exact center of the Hurva, from where the Torah is read. The Bema faces a u-shaped ark on a higher, raised platform with stepped access applying the aforementioned strategies. These programmatic elements, through the deployment of a combination of careful, deliberate assignment of circulation and architectural form, address the spiritual dimension of humanity by incorporating expressive visual perspectives that establish an unwavering relationship between the building and the numinous world. Such narrations of spatial quality are possible due to the silence and magnanimity of the inner sanctum where diffused yellow light strikes the alternatingly positioned, similar solid/void geometries, illuminating the space, while constantly moving through the day, protecting the inner sanctum from the heat of the sun by the massive pylons. The form of the inner sanctum opens like a tree, creating a semiotic embodiment of spatial demarcation with material, texture, and color of the silver (concrete) sanctum and gold (stone) pylons.

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Light, and its purpose A sectional trimetric axonometric projection (military perspective) drawing with sectional cuts at the mezzanine ambulatory level and inner sanctum ceiling level reveals the complex composition of the Hurva in superlative detail.

The specific complexity of the zone where the pylons and the inner sanctum ceilings never quite touch, is clearly visible when viewed in this projection.

With a part of the cross-shaped opening formed by the inner sanctum roofs

removed by the sectional plane, the finesse of the gaps created between the forms is revealed, which accentuates a sunlight game of hide-n-seek through tectonic repetitions of solid–void volume edges. It transcends into a spatial illusionism of the light cast by the intense desert sunlight piercing through an ever-changing pattern of yellow and reflected white soft-diffused light within the building through the day.

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direct light movement of light (sun position)

The areas between the outer pylons and the inner sanctum act as diffusing arrangement/coloring devices for light. The sunlight that strikes the upper pylons causes the light to diffuse and creates the yellow light that is thrown on the concrete ceiling. The light gray color of the concrete softens this light and reflects it back into the niches of the pylons. The areas between the tapering pylons and the sloping inner sanctum produce a constantly

reflected light with color of stone reflected light with color of concrete

changing lighting effect throughout the day.

This effect was studied and simulated using a digital 3D model placed at the exact coordinates of the proposed site during May, 1974 in Jerusalem. The lighting analysis and captured stills are presented in the following spreads along with a video link of the light simulation.

Location: Jerusalem, Israel Time Zone: UTC/GMT + 2hrs Date: May 7, 1974 Time: 1030 hrs Azimuth: 110.4° Elevation: 57.83° Sunrise: 05:48:40 Sunset: 19:23:01

Simulation criteria The sunlight movement simulation setup for May 7, 1974, was developed for a time when the Hurva project was likely to be approved following the completion of a memorial garden at the site of the previous temple ruins.

The sun path diagram shows the sun movement with its position captured at 10:30am and the corresponding shadows cast by the Hurva on to the site. An aerial site view developed in Infraworks is shown here at the same

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time, with the Hurva placed in the intended site location. A light movement simulation digital experiment was conducted on a half model, on the longitudinal axis of symmetry, exposing the Bema and two inner sanctuaries

Hour

Elevation

Azimuth

05: 48: 40

-0.833°

69.71°

6: 00: 00

1.43°

71.2°

7: 00: 00

13.75°

78.68°

8: 00: 00

26.38°

85.97°

9: 00: 00

39.13°

93.88°

10: 00: 00

51.73°

103.8°

11: 00: 00

63.63°

119.11°

12: 00: 00

72.94°

149.64°

13: 00: 00

74°

201.64°

14: 00: 00

65.7°

236.85°

15: 00: 00

54.07°

253.99°

16: 00: 00

41.55°

264.56°

17: 00: 00

28.82°

272.72°

18: 00: 00

16.16°

280.07°

19: 00: 00

3.79°

287.48°

19: 23: 01

-.833°

290.47°

as the sun traverses along its daily arc from dawn to dusk. On this day, the sun position directly above the Hurva occurs at 11.35 am, striking the ark with a beam of light vertically into the inner sanctuary and Bema.

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06:00

09:00

10:00

12:00

13:00

16:00

17:00

Location: Jerusalem, Israel | Time Zone: UTC/GMT + 2hrs | Date: May 7, 1974 Sunrise: 05:48:40 | Sunset: 19:23:01

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07:00

08:00

11:00

11:35 Vertical light illuminates the bema directly

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19:00 watch the light movement simulation

Longitudinal Section | First proposal, 10:00 am

This sectional perspective drawing was developed along the exactly at the two symmetrical axes lead to the mezzanine longitudinal axis of symmetry to expose the complexity of ambulatory spaces. composition and its simple form geometries. The stairs placed The seating surrounding the Bema on three sides is designed to

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accommodate 200 people, which, during large services becomes This tower-to-tower sectional view emphasizes Kahn’s vision of the house of assembly for crowds to gather during the High Holy “The outside of the building belongs to the sun, the interior belongs to Days. the shadows. It is a place where people live.”

Longitudinal Section | Artistic perspective, 10:00am Using an artistic 1p perspective, this drawing shows the gold of “golden” light reflected off the massive stone pylons. Kahn (pylons) and silver (inner sanctum) light vision of Kahn. The envisioned these pylons to be the largest size possible, built out mid-morning yellow sunlight strikes the pylons creating tonalities of the same Jerusalem stone as the Western Wall, to create a

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near monolithic structure. Kahn also envisioned its combination The placement of the joint lines created by stone stacking reflects with the inner concrete sanctums as “very beautiful,” and if it was the formation of such a monolithic structure that “protects” the beautifully done, it would be one of the finest materials. “fragile” concrete structure within.

Physical Model | 50 scale A large physical model of the one-half longitudinal symmetry was pieces. Some form elements of the Hurva were abstracted to built using Baltic birch plywood/solid wood using a combination accentuate the features; floor thicknesses were maintained process of laser cutting and CNC milling to develop the assembly constant to aid assembly/disassembly.

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(top left) Studio presentation setup showing transverse sectional model (top right) Model placed in studio to an east facing window to capture movement of morning sunlight in the building (bottom far left) Exterior view looking north (bottom left) Interior view looking at the solid–void arrangement of forms of inner sanctum forms with the pylons and wings framing a glimpse of the outside (bottom right) One of the entrances into the Hurva through the narrow opening between the pylons (bottom far right) Partial isometric view of transverse section of the model along the EW direction.

In the Works | VR model - Fall 2021

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End of Document

Case Study of the Hurva by Morgan Raman

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