Beautifully placed on a slightly rising slope in a tropical garden-like environment, it is ideally a building for the meditative spirit. No view extends to the outside, except from balconies that project from the second level. The concrete block walls are perforated by abstract designs within which are set colored glass, admitting light in subtle tones through the walls of the ground floor of the interior. Above this lower level in subdued light, the eye is drawn to the glowing lantern tower directly overhead, rising above the congregation to bring in daylight in light-pattern. Where one looks up into the lantern tower, expecting to find weight and support, the soft light filters in through translucent skylights enhanced by flowers and vines planted in great angular bowls suspended within the tower.
All emphasis is directed toward the sky, the source of ever-changing light and shadow.
Beth Sholom Synagogue Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. 1954. For the first time in 500 years a sense of architectural form appears as a new spiritual integrity. Light and thin walls may now depend from cantilever slabs supported from the interior on shallow, dry-wall footings, walls themselves becoming slender screens, entirely independent of use as support. In general, structure now becomes an affair from the inside outward instead of from the outside inward. The new sense of interior space as reality may characterize modern building.