Bahá'í Temple Terrace and Railing
The Bahá'í Temple Terrace, Monumental Stairs, and Gardens and Fountains were reconstructed in the early 2010's.
Recently, we visited one of our older projects at the Bahá’í Temple in Wilmette, the Terrace and Gardens Renovation, which was completed more than a decade ago. The terrace encircles the base of the Temple’s monumental stairs, allowing visitors to walk around the building and pass into the nine surrounding gardens. At first glance, it may seem like a relatively simple element of the site. In reality, nearly everything about it is more complicated than it looks.
The original guardrails were too low and had openings that were too large to meet current building codes. Designing new guardrails that met contemporary safety requirements while honoring the architectural character of the Temple was one of the project’s most challenging details. I designed the curved stainless-steel guardrails with an intricate crisscrossing pattern inspired by the historic railings they replaced.
Every walking paver is custom-sized and shaped. The joints between pavers form enormous concentric circles and radial lines that converge at the center point of the Temple. The pavers were cast in two custom precast-concrete color mixes and rest on hidden pedestals, allowing rainwater to drain through and beneath the walking surface rather than collecting in puddles.
Beneath the terrace is a large maintenance tunnel housing piping, pumps, and other infrastructure serving the garden fountains. Precast concrete cladding panels along the sides conceal the terrace waterproofing system and the guardrail connections.
There is purpose behind all of this complexity. The terrace needed to be worthy of the extraordinary architecture and gardens it connects. Careful water management was also essential to protecting a historic structure exposed to the harsh climate along the shore of Lake Michigan.
Every detail, from the waterproofing hidden beneath the surface to the geometry of the paving above it, was considered with beauty, longevity, and function in mind.
There’s something especially rewarding about returning to a project more than ten years later and discovering that both the visible design and the quiet, invisible work beneath it are performing exactly as intended.
