Temple Bat Yahm Chapel and Campus
Newport Beach, Calif.
Lehrer Architects

Rooted in a green landscape, a light-filled temple climbs skyward

© Lehrer Architects

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Temple Bat Yahm sits on a sun-drenched roughly five-acre site within a mile of the Pacific Coast. The rabbi engaged Lehrer Architects to expand and transform a single, windowless structure into the Torah Center, a multi-building campus of spiritual spaces that engage the landscape. He believed that the center’s mission is symbolized by Jacob’s ladder: rooted in this world, a horizontal realm “where God’s immanence is felt,” it engages the heavens, a vertical realm where “God’s transcendence is embodied.”

The architects designed the campus with sustainability in mind. Green features include maximum use of daylight, natural ventilation and highly efficient mechanical ventilation, watershed management and permeable landscaped surfaces, and native plantings. Automobile parking, particularly in Southern California, often dictates site design, but here the architects tried something innovative. They surrounded the center with a “parking park” of grassy lawns that function primarily as a park but double as a parking lot when needed. This environmentally friendly parking solution doubles the perceived size of the campus and situates the buildings amid a landscape of greenery, as opposed to a large expanse of asphalt.

The campus’s design includes emblematic and iconic forms to house the congregation and its spiritual community. Its architecture works in tandem with the landscape to define processional axes. The architects used color to help emphasize the campus’s different themes. Light helps bind the different themes together, symbolizing the rabbi’s belief that light and spirit are synonymous. Sustainability and beauty become the rudiments of the spiritual, aesthetic life.

Formal name of Project:
Temple Bat Yahm Chapel and Campus

Location:
Newport Beach, Calif.

Gross square footage:
29,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$6.2 million

Owner:
Temple Bat Yahm

Architect:
Lehrer Architects
2227 Talmadge Street
Los Angeles, CA. 90027
www.lehrerarchitects.com