Synagogue

SeARCH - Amsterdam, The Netherlands - 2010

Key words: Brick, Community, Education, Jali, Plinth, Resilience, Ventilation

SYNAGOGUE EXTERIOR - Photography: © Iwan Baan

This synagogue project frames architecture as the shaping of emptiness, where space itself becomes the primary medium of identity. Confronted with the absence of a distinct architectural tradition for synagogues, the design resists ostentation and instead embodies Judaism’s subtle and enigmatic character. The focus is on ritual essentials: benches facing each other along the axis between the Bimah and the Ark, and the use of bright daylight as a spiritual agent.

The synagogue is conceived as a rectilinear volume shaped by economy of site and budget. Its central identity emerges through the hollowing out of this mass, creating a vast void - the “emptiness” of the Sjoel - which becomes a sacred spatial condition. This void is flanked by side spaces and layered balconies, whose arrangement, together with the central verticality above the Bimah, subtly suggests the Menora. As the oldest symbol of Judaism, the Menora’s evocation connects the project to the burning bush of Sinai and the divine creation of light, which here becomes both symbol and material.

Critically, the project succeeds in articulating Jewish spirituality through abstraction and absence rather than ornament or historical mimicry. By privileging light, void, and spatial ritual, it defines a synagogue language rooted in restraint, identity, and transcendence.