The Moise Safra Center, a second home for the Jewish community

Located on New York’s Upper East Side, the Moise Safra Center was envisioned as a second home for its young Jewish community. The building comprises a vertical campus of religious and community spaces, spread over in a vertical campus of 14 floors. The Center grows from a desire to provide a safe place for the pursuit of cultural, educational, and spiritual endeavors while creating a lively setting for social interaction and community engagement. Being a new institution, MSC did not have an established program, so we worked with them to define the building’s functional and operational goals. This inclusive process extended from the design phase into construction, as the Center hired staff and its program needs evolved. Maximizing program space was a key requirement for the client. We carefully stacked the building to take advantage of the allowable zoning envelope and located an additional two floors below grade. The resulting 65,000 sf building utilizes all available floor area on the site. Programmatically split between religious and community spaces, the building is organized vertically with religious spaces on the first 4 floors, and community spaces below and above the religious core. The Center required both specialized spaces, including an aquatic and fitness center, art and cooking classrooms, a dance studio, a half basketball court, as well as open flexible spaces that accommodate multiple uses through reconfigurable partitions. Every space is outfitted with advanced AV capabilities. For example, both the double height basketball court and banquet rooms can be transformed into an immersive theater experience with large projection screens, the pool can support a child’s birthday party in the overlooking lounge area,and the rooftop terrace can transform from noisy play-yard to a meditative outdoor yoga classroom. The modern design of the Center reflects the sensibilities of its members, young and forward thinking while at the same time honoring the traditions of their community. The outward expression of the building capitalizes on North and East facing primary exposures, flooding the main spaces with natural light. Warm terracotta panels and a series of monumental Jerusalem limestone-clad fins at the synagogue level acknowledge the context of a largely masonry neighborhood, and a contemporary interpretation of stained glass reveals itself from behind the fins, hinting at the religious space within. Harkening back to its spiritual roots, the client requested that Jerusalem limestone be used prominently. Starting with the carved round column at the building entry, and extending into the synagogue lobby, the limestone marks the religious spaces of the building. MSC desired two separate but related identities for the religious and community spaces. We took a holistic approach to interweave these two identities, starting with a common entry vestibule that opens into two distinct rooms. The community side welcomes you with a café and reception desk before orienting you to the myriad of program spaces offered on other floors. The synagogue lobby is entered through a series of ornate doors crafted from wood, bronze and colored glass that establish the palette employed throughout the religious spaces. The synagogue lobby is faced with limestone on three sides, extending up the stair that leads to the synagogue spaces above. Opposite is a backlit wall of veined white marble, laminated with glass to create a translucent screen to the community center lobby beyond. The synagogue lobby and stair, reflecting light from the Venetian plaster and honed limestone surfaces, lead members up to the double-height formal sanctuary and a smaller daily sanctuary with a generous attached library/study. The synagogue has a soaring ceiling and wraparound balcony yet is an intimate gathering space. Daylight activates the warm material palette of Jerusalem limestone and light wood, and introduces an immersive element of color that changes throughout the day. The formal design language that began on the exterior reaches its crescendo in the stone, bronze and colored glass ark which becomes the focal point of the space and guardian of the sacred scrolls within.