My partner is a freelance writer, and while she specializes in writing about ecological pollution prevention issues, she also writes about other topics. Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle has an article of hers that manages to tie together religion, architecture, and Italian racing motorcycles….

San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 28, 2005

“Divining Architecture: Designing churches and collecting motorcycles is a spiritual practice for a San Francisco architect,” by Carol Steinfeld

In his SOMA live-work loft, architect John Goldman weaves through his collection of historic and vintage Italian racing motorcycles. He kneels next to an unrestored 1951 Bianchi — still covered with half a century of soot — and points to its parts.

“See, there’s symmetry, harmony, proportion,” he says reverently. “Everything is out there: You can see the springs, the flywheel, the tank and transmission. It’s a combination of curves and streamlines, ovals and parallel lines. Its exposed functions are its primary ornament. It’s the same language I use in architecture.”

Around him, more than 30 racing motorcycles — many of them veterans of long-ago races in Italy — spill out of alcoves, even his bedroom.

It’s an unexpected sight in the office of an architect with nearly 20 Bay Area churches and synagogues to his credit.

But “dissolving artificial distinctions” is the mark of the work of this designer, whose home was designed after a Texaco station, who likens buildings to living organisms, who transformed a mortuary into a synagogue and modeled a church after a castle in a Japanese film. To Goldman, it’s just a continuum of good design, beauty and connection.

That’s really all I can put here and comply with copyright restrictions. But you can go to SFGate.com and check out the rest of the article.( And if your congregation is thinking about hiring an architect, wouldn’t you prefer someone who arrived at meetings riding his 1970 Ducati?)