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Jewish Center of the Hamptons Timber Pavilion: Dattner’s Man-Made Grove Explained

Dattner Architects’ Timber Pavilion adds a 250-person open-air gathering room to the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, using four clustered cedar supports, a sawtooth roof and a protected link to Norman Jaffe’s sanctuary.

By ThatPainter Team 18 October 2026
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Dattner Architects’ Timber Pavilion expands the Jewish Center of the Hamptons campus in East Hampton, New York, with an open-air room for worship, performances, contemplation and celebrations. Designed beside Norman Jaffe’s synagogue sanctuary, the 3,500-square-foot pavilion uses four clustered cedar supports—conceived as trunks with diagonal “branches”—to keep the gathering area open to the surrounding grove.

Architectural Record reports a capacity of 250 people, a 60-by-68-foot plan with its corners cut away, and a sawtooth roof rising 20 feet. North-facing skylights, zinc roofing, a glass-covered walkway and off-site timber fabrication tie the addition to the existing campus while limiting the amount of construction activity at the operating synagogue.

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What the pavilion adds to the Jewish Center of the Hamptons

The Timber Pavilion is a new communal room for the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton, New York. Dattner Architects designed it as an extension of the campus surrounding the synagogue sanctuary by Norman Jaffe, not as a freestanding event hall disconnected from the religious complex. The brief, reported by Wendy Moonan in Architectural Record on December 15, 2025, called for a place where the congregation could hold religious observance, performances, contemplation and celebrations outdoors.

Dattner’s project description presents the building as a venue nestled in a grove. Its sides remain open, so people inside retain visual contact with the trees and the grounds. That openness is central to the project: the pavilion supplies weather-protected space without replacing the sense of being outside. The building therefore completes the campus by adding capacity and flexibility while preserving the landscape as part of the experience.

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Reported size and occupancy

Dattner Architects lists the pavilion at 3,500 square feet. Architectural Record describes a rectangular plan measuring 60 by 68 feet, with four L-shaped pieces removed from the corners. The same report gives a capacity of 250 people and a roof height of 20 feet. These are published project figures, rather than measurements independently verified for this article.

Project attribute Published description Attribution
Floor area 3,500 square feet Dattner Architects project page
Plan 60 by 68 feet, with four L-shaped corner cutouts Architectural Record, 2025
Reported capacity 250 people Architectural Record, 2025
Roof height 20 feet Architectural Record, 2025

How four timber “trees” carry the idea

The pavilion’s defining move is structural economy. Instead of distributing many conventional columns around the perimeter, Dattner Architects groups the vertical supports into four large timber clusters. Richard Dattner explained the choice to Architectural Record: “I wanted to minimize the number of columns, to keep open the sidelines, so I decided on four ‘man-made trees’ with diagonal supports, or ‘branches,’ to reinforce the 3,500-square-foot structure.”

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The analogy is deliberately restrained. The columns are not sculpted replicas of natural trunks. They are clusters of laminated cedar members whose angled pieces support the girders above. Seen together, the vertical clusters read as trunks and the diagonals as branches, while their limited number leaves the center and edges available for people, processions, performances and changing seating arrangements.

What the hollow clusters contain

Dattner’s description says the column clusters enclose conduits and roof drainage. Architectural Record also reports that the four hollow columns conceal water-drainage and electrical conduits. Services are therefore folded into the primary architectural elements instead of being added as visible pipes or separate utility chases. The result is a cleaner interior and a direct connection between the tree metaphor and the building’s practical infrastructure.

The diagonal timber members support the roof girders, giving the structural frame a recognizable rhythm from inside. Because the supports are concentrated at four points, the pavilion can maintain open sightlines toward the grove. The sources describe this as a design intention; they do not provide a structural comparison with an alternative column layout or a measured increase in usable area.

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A roof that echoes the sanctuary and admits controlled daylight

The pavilion’s roof repeats the sanctuary’s slanting geometry, helping the addition belong to the existing campus rather than appearing as an unrelated object. Above the open gathering space, a sawtooth profile creates a series of roof monitors. The monitors face north, continuing the sanctuary’s relationship to directional daylight.

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North-facing skylights

Dattner Architects says the north-facing skylights bring natural light into the pavilion while avoiding the heat and glare concerns associated with other orientations. That statement describes the design rationale, not a published thermal or glare measurement. The roof monitors also reinforce the project’s visual link to the sanctuary: both buildings use angled roof forms to shape light and establish a common architectural language.

Daylight enters from above while the open sides keep the grove visible at eye level. This two-level connection—sky through the monitors and trees through the perimeter—makes the pavilion feel like a sheltered clearing rather than an enclosed room with windows.

Night lighting

For evening use, the firm describes dark-sky-compliant LED downlights integrated into grooves in the columns and beneath the roof monitors. Locating fixtures within the timber and roof structure keeps the light sources visually quiet. “Dark-sky-compliant” is the architect’s project description; the available sources do not include an independent sky-quality audit, illumination readings or an energy-use assessment.

Landscape: a grove that is part of the architecture

The arboreal concept extends beyond the frame. Architectural Record reports that landscape architect Chris LaGuardia planted 22 Virginia magnolias around the pavilion. The site also retains an existing 175-year-old European beech. Together, the new plantings and the mature tree establish a setting in which the timber supports can be read as a human-made counterpart to living trunks.

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Dattner described the larger intention in the Architectural Record feature: “My goal was to create a manmade forest in a grove of trees.” The report connects that idea with his interpretation of favorite prayers. The project page likewise describes the surrounding grove and refers to the synagogue’s “Gates of the Grove” name, making the landscape a continuation of the campus identity rather than decorative planting around a building.

The sources do not document the future growth rate of the magnolias, a tree-preservation plan, irrigation performance or quantified habitat benefits. What is established is the planting count, the retained beech and the deliberate use of the grove as the pavilion’s visual and spiritual context.

Materials that connect new work to the sanctuary

Dattner Architects identifies laminated Alaskan yellow cedar for the columns, girders and beams. The warm, honey-colored timber gives the structure its tactile presence and makes the “trunk” reading legible without resorting to literal imitation. The firm specifies zinc roofing, while Architectural Record notes honey-colored limestone chosen to match the sanctuary.

Material continuity operates at two scales. The cedar frame establishes the pavilion’s own identity, and the limestone relates its base and surrounding surfaces to Norman Jaffe’s sanctuary. Zinc provides a durable roof skin for the sawtooth form. The documented palette is therefore limited and coherent: laminated timber overhead and at the supports, zinc above, and limestone that visually bridges old and new construction.

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Walkway connection

A timber-framed walkway with a glass cover links the pavilion to the sanctuary. The protected passage gives congregants a sheltered transition between the enclosed worship building and the open gathering room. It also clarifies that the pavilion is an extension of the campus circulation system, not simply a pavilion reached across exposed ground.

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Off-site fabrication and the six-day assembly

The project used a largely off-site timber process. Dattner Architects says the Alaskan yellow cedar was laminated and fabricated in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, then transported to East Hampton on one truck. The firm reports that assembly at the synagogue site took six days.

Fabricating the major timber members away from the campus was intended to reduce disruption while the synagogue remained active. It also allowed the pieces to arrive prepared for a short erection period. The six-day figure refers to the reported on-site assembly, not to the full design, permitting, fabrication or foundation schedule.

Dattner describes the pavilion as designed for minimal carbon impact and identifies off-site fabrication as a way to limit construction impact. Those are stated design goals and process choices. The available project material does not provide a life-cycle carbon calculation, a comparison with steel or concrete alternatives, transportation emissions, timber certification data or operational energy results. Readers should therefore distinguish the low-disruption construction strategy from a quantified sustainability claim.

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Sound, lighting and the challenge of an open-sided room

An outdoor room must support speech, music and ritual without behaving like a sealed auditorium. Architectural Record reports 27 small speakers in the ceiling and says lighting and sound studies were undertaken with the aim of avoiding disturbance to neighbors. The open sides, however, remain a defining part of the architecture and mean that sound can move into the surrounding grounds.

The reports do not publish decibel limits, reverberation times, event-specific sound tests or a guarantee of containment. The appropriate reading is that the design team considered neighbor impact and integrated a distributed speaker system; it is not evidence of independently measured acoustic performance.

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Design priorities readers can see in the finished scheme

Design priority Documented response What the sources establish
Keep the gathering space visually open Four clustered supports instead of many columns; open sides toward the grove Dattner’s stated structural and spatial intention
Relate the addition to the sanctuary Slanting roof forms, matching limestone and a covered connecting walkway Material and formal continuity described by the architect and Architectural Record
Bring daylight into the roof North-facing skylights in sawtooth roof monitors Architect’s rationale concerning natural light, heat and glare
Make the landscape part of the experience Open perimeter, 22 Virginia magnolias and retained 175-year-old European beech Reported landscape and site features
Limit activity at an operating campus Timber fabricated off site, delivered on one truck and assembled in six days Firm’s reported construction approach
Support evening events LED downlights in column grooves and below roof monitors; 27 ceiling speakers Architect’s lighting description and Architectural Record report

What is known—and what remains undocumented

The project accounts identify the architect, program, principal dimensions, material palette, landscape additions and reported assembly method. They do not establish a project budget, an exact opening date or inauguration date, permit history, or the name of a structural engineer. Architectural Record says the pavilion was inaugurated “last summer” in relation to its 2025 publication, but that wording does not supply a calendar date.

Performance claims require the same care. The sources describe intentions concerning carbon impact, daylight, glare, dark-sky lighting, sound and neighbor disturbance, but do not publish measured environmental or acoustic outcomes. The pavilion can be assessed as a coherent architectural strategy without treating those intentions as test results.

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Why the project matters as a civic and religious building

The Timber Pavilion demonstrates how a religious campus can grow by adding an intermediate condition between building and landscape. It is more protective than an uncovered lawn and more permeable than a conventional hall. That middle ground accommodates a broad program—observance, performance, contemplation and celebration—without requiring every activity to occur inside the sanctuary.

Its structural expression supports that civic flexibility. Four concentrated timber clusters leave room for different seating plans, standing gatherings and performances, while the open edges preserve views to the grove. The roof monitors provide a recognizable ceiling and controlled top light, and the covered walkway makes the new room part of the sanctuary’s everyday circulation.

Dattner’s broader practice has long emphasized civic architecture. His biography lists the books Design for Play and Civil Architecture–The New Public Infrastructure; Architectural Record reports the latter title as Civic Architecture: The New Public Infrastructure in a 1995 publication reference. Because the titles are presented differently by the two sources, they should not be treated as identical bibliographic entries without consulting a library catalog.

Further reading on sacred architecture

Readers seeking a wider context can look for Yale School of Architecture’s 2011 publication Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture, edited by Karla Britton (ISBN 9780300170375). It surveys contemporary sacred architecture across faiths, including Judaism, rather than documenting this pavilion specifically.

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The most direct project accounts remain Wendy Moonan’s December 15, 2025 feature in Architectural Record and Dattner Architects’ “Jewish Center of the Hamptons Timber Pavilion” project page. Together they provide the reported dimensions, counts and descriptions used above.

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