As part of a project wherein contemporary writers and artists grapple with the text of the Torah, big New York architecture firm Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) conceived hypothetical renderings for a Tabernacle designed to squeeze into the heart of Manhattan, an airy structure with all the dimensions—cubits!—God enumerated in Exodus, but rotated 90 degrees to fit a narrow urban footprint. The result is an open, wall-like structure threaded with staircases leading up to the Golden Alter and down to the Brazen Alter. Because they took the measurements verbatim, the firm—co-headed by Architizer co-founder Marc Kushner—couldn't design walls on all sides, making the religious building unusually "accessible and transparent." So says Kushner: "In the end it looks a lot like an International Style skyscraper. Maybe that was God telling us that we should be Modernists, not Classicists." So where are the cherubim, goat hair curtains, and dolphin skins? Uh, yeah. Not here.
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