Schindler faced numerous challenges besides the budget: A narrow and small corner lot; the poor quality and low quantity of wartime material; and the congregation’s needs. But the project seemed an ideal fit for both client and designer. Writing in the journal Pencil Points around the same time, Schindler professed that an architect “must understand the owner and the neighborhood sufficiently to make his design an asset to both … He must sense the meaning of life and have a vision of its future,” in addition to the “financial, structural, and spiritual aspects of each undertaking.” The Bethlehem Baptist Church exemplifies Schindler’s philosophy: Good design meant paring down to find the essence of how a building could shape light and inspire positive social interaction.
According to his design brief, the space establishes “dynamic connections between indoor and outdoor social spaces.” The exterior, made from overlapping horizontal structures, was painted originally in a pale mulberry-gray. The layered construction also provided a roof terrace that functioned as a stage. Inside, the floors and walls of the L-shaped sanctuary intensified to a rosy violet and deep plum. Intersecting roof beams shaped the natural light from the skylights onto the rectangular lip of the pulpit, echoing the straight lines of the three-dimensional cross on the roof. The exterior and interior spaces produce an organic, natural relationship that promotes sociality. Indeed, Esther McCoy, Schindler’s draftsperson, remarked that the design’s success laid in how it dispensed with all the clichés of typical church design while also avoiding flourish for its own sake. Committed to executing the congregation’s vision while adhering to his own beliefs enabled Schindler’s understated experimentation to find a form that served how the building was lived in and continues to live.
A Schindler building “is in movement; it is in becoming. Form emerges from form,” McCoy wrote. Lady White’s SS-24 collection EXTENDS the brand’s practice of quiet abstraction. Continuing to explore how the forms of jersey knits behave in shapes once reserved for woven textiles only, the SS-24 collection offers singular staples and uncommon layering options with unconventional appeal.
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).
