The Kibbitz
as they were a thousand years ago. They’ve been washed and cleaned. You see the stone, beautiful lighting. What makes that place extraordinary? It’s light, the quality of light. It is the resonance between the form and the structural system, the sort of soaring up, soaring structure, the way every- thing sort of meets, columns become pilasters become flying buttresses. There’s a world of ornament, which is an outcome of the crafting of the build- ing. In the case of the church, there’s another layer of art, stained glass win- dows, the sculpture and all that play a role. Now a synagogue is minus the art, minus the sculpture, but not minus the colour necessarily; there is the struc- ture itself and there is the light. The synagogue first of all is a matter of light — light of all kinds. There are so many different qualities of light. Light is an element by which we can have that sense of spiritual uplift. In the case of the synagogue, it also has to do with a sense of the commu- nal. The bimah is an important centre, and then there’s the aron hakodesh , an- other important centre, and the ritual path between them. And then the way people sit in the synagogue looking at each other with the heights, the levels. It’s very hard to give a prescription. I’ve noticed that ever since writing your memoir ( If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture , published in 2022), you’ve done a lot of inter- views. What have you learned about yourself in the process? I think the nice thing about being al- most 87 is that you reach a certain level of security and self-appreciation about what you’ve achieved that allows you to look at things much more open- ly and in an appreciative way. I’d say that, 20 years ago, I would be more cri- tical of things. There is a mellowing.
qualities. What matters is: Is it a won- derful place for learning? Is the class- room an inspiring place? Is it the place where community evolves? These are the ingredients. Then there’s econo- mics and reality and building codes and you are orchestrating and float- ing between them all. What do you think are the elements of great synagogue architecture giv- en the specific needs of any given synagogue, such as an ark or bimah ? I was recently in Paris and I went to see Notre-Dame, which has been re- furbished and rebuilt. And for the first time we’re seeing it with all the walls
client, and sometimes you learn from the client. It’s a dynamic thing. For me, understanding the site with all its subtleties beginning from cli- mate, topography, the surrounding culture, the lifestyle of the community — all these things are important. I gave a lecture series at the Harvard Graduate School of Design this se- mester on the theme of belonging: How do you make a building belong? And belonging is not in the eyes of the architect; it’s in the eyes of the user. If you want to achieve a sense of be- longing, you’ve got to have it emerge in the user. If you do a school, I don’t care about the shapes and sculptural
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