Three faiths, but one vision

A few years ago, Boston-based architect Maurice Finegold got a call from Omaha that stopped him in his tracks.

He’d already been hired to design a new synagogue for Omaha’s Temple Israel, which had outgrown its location at 70th and Cass Streets. It was a big project in its own right, but now he was hearing about something even more significant.

Temple Israel, he was told, wasn’t the only religious group in the city looking to build. The American Institute of Islamic Studies and Culture had plans for a new mosque and study center. The Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska wanted a church that would house a new congregation.

And at least a few people in those groups were asking the same question: What if we did this together?

Even for an architect with a lengthy résumé and plenty of major projects under his belt, this idea in Omaha was something altogether different. This was a chance to figure out how to bring three sections of the community together, each with its own needs and traditions, through what he calls a “common visual language.”

“That was extraordinarily exciting,” Finegold said. “For the following two years or so, it’s what got me out of bed in the morning: To think about … that one might be able to make a statement in how people could really talk with each other.”

In the months that followed, the three groups created a new organization, the Tri-Faith Initiative, and selected a site: a 35-acre patch of land at the former Ironwood County Club at 132nd and Pacific Streets. It’s one piece of a planned mixed-use development called Sterling Ridge, which also will have homes, offices and shops, among other features.

Finegold, a principal at the firm of Finegold Alexander + Associates, was joined by two other architects.

Patrick J. Morgan, the Omaha director for Slaggie Architects, signed on to design the Islamic center and mosque. John Goldman, an Omaha native and principal at Goldman Architects in San Francisco, was hired to design the Episcopal church and a shared tri-faith center, which will have classroom and conference space.

For now, the tri-faith campus is still a big, cleared-out space. But as soon as early spring, when Temple Israel plans to break ground, years of planning will start to become something very real.

As soon as the three architects started talking, it became clear that Finegold wasn’t the only one excited about the possibilities — and clear that there would be plenty of unique challenges for an effort so unprecedented.

To begin, there was the issue of where to locate each piece of the campus.

The initial plan was to create a triangle with the mosque, synagogue and church, and place the shared building at its center. But a creek running through the middle of the property — named Hell Creek — posed a problem.

The architects considered building the tri-faith center over the creek, but the plan was scrapped after it became too complicated.

The idea of a physical link — a bridge — between the three religions, however, became a centerpiece of the design.

Temple Israel, which already has a congregation, needed the most space. In the plans, the 60,000-square-foot synagogue ended up on its own, to the east of the creek. The remaining three buildings were plotted to the west, but the architects wanted to make sure all four were linked.

“That bridge becomes very important, both literally and symbolically,” Goldman said.

But they had to contend with something else. Each of the buildings would need to be positioned in accordance with tradition: the synagogue facing east, the church situated so the altar table would face east. The mosque needed to face Mecca — also east, but at a slightly different orientation.

And they wanted to do all of that while maintaining the topography of the land, rather than flattening it out. A goal, Goldman said, was to avoid an endless sea of parking lots that would break up the flow of the design.

“As you enter the site and you’re driving down the eastern side, with parking to the west, you don’t see parking between yourself and the three buildings,” he said.

Typically, the architects would complete both the building and site plans at the same time, Morgan said. But in this case, with the synagogue ahead in the planning process, and the need to make sure each piece of the puzzle fit properly, the site plans came long before most of the buildings.

So for now, the designers of the Islamic center and the church and the tri-faith center are still figuring out exactly what their buildings will look like.

Of the three, the Islamic center is the furthest along; Morgan said he knows it will be two stories and about 20,000 square feet. He expects to break ground in early summer and wrap up construction by the end of 2013, around the same time as the synagogue.

Goldman, meanwhile, is still gathering input about what’s needed in both of his buildings. In initial discussions, there was talk of the tri-faith center being somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 square feet, but he said it could end up being twice that size. A rough estimate for the church is about 30,000 square feet.

As each architect consults with his client, the plans of the other groups are a central part of the discussion.

Together, they’ve agreed that each building should share important characteristics. That could mean using similar building materials. Both Morgan and Finegold have talked about limestone, but different varieties.

Members of Temple Israel are interested in limestone from the Minneapolis area, which has a yellow-tinted color that resembles stone found around Jerusalem. The Islamic center, meanwhile, may opt for limestone from Kansas, which is more white in color.

The stone is from the region in part because the architects are making their plans with a focus on sustainability. They’re trying to use materials that come from places no farther than 500 miles away.

Another common theme: light.

Finegold’s plan for the synagogue calls for the top part of the building to be illuminated with LED lighting, creating a glow visible from the road. The two other architects said they’re considering something similar, as well as lighted pathways. All of it, they said, is meant to be another visual reminder of how the buildings — and the people who visit them — are connected.

The architects said they’ve been surprised so far at how often their plans have matched up, even before sharing them with one another.

And their work is picking up interest from across the country. Morgan said he recently got a call from an Episcopal priest in Washington, D.C., who also is an architect and wondered how he could create something similar in that city.

Finegold joked that all the attention is a motivator to keep up the pace, so Omaha’s tri-faith project can be the first of its kind.

“We have to hurry up and build it — before everyone catches on,” he said.