The process of determining the building design brought to the surface some of the most basic and profound questions. The new building complex reflects the congregation’s values; it is warm, open, welcoming, accessible, unpretentious, egalitarian and spiritual. In essence they have a pavilion in the garden, a place of peace in an urban environment, through which by passage from the street to the sanctuary space, one begins to shed the daily concerns and prepare to enter a sacred precinct.

• The religious complex was a hybrid structure between residential, and commercial in scale and construction method. It was paramount to the owners to find a local contractor capable of viewing this project as such. For the most obvious reasons, some areas required exceptional detail, but how Wright-Ryan oversaw the junctures were essential to the making and costing.
• The complex combined structural steel and wood. Where these two trades intersected affected the schedule, costing, and required clever engineering solutions in the field.
• The distance between the architect’s office in Toronto and Portland posed some challenges, but the methods employed as the project commenced helped to meld a solution driven team. The owners were pleased to see the level of trust and communication that developed between Wright-Ryan and Shim-Sutcliffe.
• The ceiling was designed to run at the same uninterrupted plane from outside to inside and back outside. The curve dramatically affects one’s sense of interior scale, sound defection, interior light reflections and site lines. The form allows for a sense of intimacy both at times when nearly empty or when filled with hundreds of people.
• The building section with 12 degree sloped walls and angled interior baffles seems to be activated by the daily timing of the Jewish liturgy; the continuous skylight systems, using renewable materials; douglas fur and cypress, have created a building of emotional portent unlike any ever built. The simplicity of detailing and the rigor of the expressed construction systems make the interior timeless.

“Collaboration is over used, but it is without a doubt that if John Ryan and his team had not decided to work with us that this building would never have come to fruition as it was envisioned.”  -Jeremy Moser, Owner’s Representative