Ohavi Zedek Synagogue

A community design project for a Burlington synagogue sitting on one of the city's largest undeveloped forest parcels. We delivered a three-zone vision called Project Bloom. They built the first piece — a yurt gathering space — within months.

Who We Worked With

Partners

Frankie Day-Lyon

Services

Research & Strategy, Product & Experience

Project Fun Fact

Community built the yurt within months of receiving the vision

A synagogue asked for a glossy vision. Their community built it within months.

Ohavi Zedek — Hebrew for “Lovers of Justice” — is a synagogue in Burlington, Vermont built on the principle of welcoming the stranger. They had extraordinary community assets: one of the largest undeveloped forest parcels in Burlington, thriving school programs, a kosher kitchen, refugee resettlement partnerships, and a one-of-a-kind Lithuanian synagogue mural that survived the Second World War. What they didn’t have was a unified vision for what to do with all of it.

They brought us in to create “glossy concepts” — not a formal plan, but something vivid enough to get the congregation moving.

We spent time with congregation members, toured the site and surrounding neighborhood, and assessed their human, built, social, cultural, financial, political, and natural capitals. Then we designed.

Our first concept — a wedding venue leveraging their existing assets — got a warm reception but didn’t fully land. The community wanted something more oriented toward their kids, their schools, and their neighbors. So we pivoted.

The result was Project Bloom: a three-zone vision for outdoor gathering spaces for adults and teens, nature-based play areas for the school programs, and new housing with an upgraded thrift shop in the abutting field — generating enough revenue to sustain the whole project long-term.

The community didn’t wait. Within months of receiving the vision, they constructed a yurt gathering space — one of our specific recommendations. The themes from Project Bloom went on to appear throughout OZ’s official Imagine 2025 strategic plan.

We designed a concept. They built a future.

This is one of the largest undeveloped pieces of forest land in Burlington and we want to welcome the community into it. As our congregation gets older, we also need to find a way to keep OZ vital and sustain OZ for generations to come.

— Congregation Member, Ohavi Zedek