emple For The Amijai Comunity, Buenos Aires

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URGELL-PENEDO-URGELL
(URGELL-PENEDO-URGELL-LYNCH-PIERANTONI ARQS.)
TEMPLO Y SEDE SOCIAL PARA
LA COMUNIDAD AMIJAI
PROJECT TEAM: Andrea López, Andrea Conte-Grand, Juliana Fullone, Mariana Di Lorenzo, Rosario Barthe Placenave, Elisa Alurralde, Enrico Santilli, Alfonso Piantini (h), Juan Pierantoni, Enrique Lynch y Augusto Penedo, arqs.
ARTISTAS PARTICIPANTES: Clorindo Testa, arq. (Árbol de Vida), Juan Zanotti (Ner Tamid
y Mezuzot), Francisco Ezcurra (Arón Hakodesh), Ariel Scornik (Puertas de Bronce), Rosana Azar (Parojet)
LOCATION: Arribeños 2355, Buenos Aires
ENCLOSED SURFACE: 2260 m2
LAND SURFACE: 2685 m2
BUILT: 2003

More pics:
http://www.summamas.com/74.htm

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Here the HI-res kmz. It is close to a train line in Buenos Aires Downtown.

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I used translation.com for this text:
A first building among dividing walls, on the municipal line, resolves the most mundane aspects of the program, protecting in the intimacy of a space landscaped the curvy volume of the temple.
The building of the same temple is hidden, far from the street. On this, we observe a building in two plants, reasonably corbusieran in its ostentatious little figuration; conventionally modern we would say in these principles of the 21st century. It crossed the thickness of this body that crosses the sideways land to side, negotiating some little evident localities of security, we remain in a luck of parallel cross gallery to the street, that is opened on a geometrically elaborate and formal garden. To our left, a box of crystal contains an oratory. But, without doubt, the interesting thing is the same temple, that now appears to us as closing of the patio, if is that the curves and continuous forms "close" the gardens, or we owe better to say that contains them.

In this case, the body of the oval plant that we contemplate is too large (if our hidden prototype is San Pietro in Montorio), and as close is insufficient, because the garden continues on both sides of that form, a surface of extremely smooth concrete and well finished. There is a great door symbolically worked in the center; without doubt, that will be the entrance of the temple. We will take then knowledge that that coexistence of architecture and nature forms part of the religious program, and within the same room we reencounter the lateral gardens that through a studied transparency participate of the limit of the interior space. Completing the simbology, to the right of the garden, a sculpture of Clorindo Testa that represents the tree of the life attracts the looks.

We will not use today the main entrance of the temple, because we go to a concert: the temple is also an excellent audience. Instead of entering ceremonially on the axis, therefore, we will slide for one of the lateral, where that gray and polished envelope is cut leaving on both sides a species of crack of all the height. As we enter it will remain to our backs that first part of the temple, excluded by a slideable wall of wood, and will be presented us as an autonomous totality the room of the temple. At front, the symbolic closing is a wall of stone that leaves from behind those spaces of support. On the lateral, the walls incline convergent on us, toward a ceiling penetrated of evident function acoustics. The lateral they are covered in wood, on a base of stone; in part, they are transparent, permitting that presence of the natural thing previousely mentioned. As well as the general form is dynamics, the cuts of those laterals repeat the dynamism of the outside.

The sensation that produces this space is of a notable harmony. Normally, the buildings "not conventional" exhaust the creativity of their designers in the general idea and they do not resist an attentive look on their materialization. It is not the case of this audience; the critical look seeks the errors; the cuts, join them, the clumsinesses, the solutions of urgency or of commitment; is not easy to find them. Here the dialogue totality-you split-join never is interrupted for inconsistencies. It is possible to exercise the professionalism in atypical buildings, this is the first conclusion that is extracted of the temple.

Since the gallery, that is a first space of transition among the street and the garden, a stair is raised that perforates the prismatic volume of the administration. From this central access, they are organized a series of classrooms and small conference rooms, toward the garden; and of offices and other more private dependences, toward the street. In the ground floor, behind the wall of the stair, there is a bar; and, advancing on the garden, "a box of
crystal contains an oratory". In the terrace, there is a sports court and a deposit.

There is not, since the intention, magical or hidden number mystery that to regulate the proportions and relations of the form in this sinuous volume of concrete. Perhaps that number or that key exist behind the conscience of who during long months we were giving form to the pieces of cardboard, to the drawings that were summarizing this light shell. They turned out of a combination of creative wills, of desires that remain patrolling the subconscious of some of us... probably there be a numerical-symbolic relation that above clumsy and blind intents, have guided our hands and intentions toward the now visible object. At any rate, we restrict us to try a form that, almost instinctively, sheltered, to protect, to meet. There would be that to seek what ancient forms, after what eternal and diffuse objectives, they are found in the roots of the history and the memory... in any case, we prefer to leave without rational explanation something that surely should not have it. Encouraging us to twist the stone-concrete, taking refuge in the calidez of the wood, trying exterior and interior spaces that multiply the visual experiences. Without the tyings of the sacred geometries, making use of an expressive liberty that we understood lawful and possible, we have tried at every step to give forms al adequate space for the bond with the divine thing.