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Identifying needs, wants, and assets

As with any Human-Centered Design process, we began by getting to know our users. We spent hours meeting with members of the congregation, learning their history, touring the site and surrounding neighborhood, and assessing the larger trends in the surrounding area. Returning to the studio, Daniel and I then “downloaded” our research and sorted it into themes.

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The key needs and wants we found:

• Community collaboration and interactions.
• Great unconventional meeting spaces.
• Way more woods/outdoors spaces.
• Safety improvements.
• More energy and attraction from the community.
• More revenue as their congregation ages.
• Occasional massive parking capacity.

We also found the following community assets:

• A delightfully untraditional community.
• Multiple thriving schools and kids programs.
• “Welcoming the stranger” social justice initiatives.
• Great beginnings of outdoors spaces, including one of the largest undeveloped forested spaces in Burlington, right on the edge of one of Burlington’s major residential areas. This area already had some very basic paths and was proudly kept open to the wider community.
• Established relationships with other religious communities.
• A congregational building with special features including

1. space that could be rapidly pivoted from cozy for a smaller number of people to comfortably accommodating hundreds of people (multiple layers of walls).
2. The Lost Shul mural, a one of a kind synagogue mural created in the Lithuanian style. Nearly all similar murals were destroyed in the Second World War.
3. A new industrial Kosher certified kitchen that a caterer could prepare a great deal of food in.

• A large abutting open field against a main street. Previously, a developer approached them about building 4 units of housing for a considerable sum. The rest of the field is used for overflow parking during extra large events.
• A popular community thrift shop that provides everything for free to Burlington’s New American community for their first two years in the community.
• Classrooms that are used part-time by OZ’s schools, and part-time by Vermont’s Office of Refugee Re- settlement for New Americans to learn English and other courses.
  

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How Might We Questions and Design Principles

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To guide a successful concept, we decided our design should

• Ensure universal accessibility
• Encourage interaction
• Incorporate and catalyze social justice
• Build relationships and community
• Generate revenue
• Involve spirituality/faith
• Engage all ages of users
• Improve natural environment and environmental relationship
• Create meeting space, sacred and normal
• Encourage exploration and use by everyone
  

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First Concept and Pivot From Community Feedback

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‍Our first concept called for creating a beautiful wed- ding venue using the resources OZ already had. The concept seemed to have promise because it harmonized their desire to welcome in the community, especially younger families, with their need for revenue and a way to pay for upgrades to the natural spaces.

When we sought community input, we found that they liked creating more outdoor spaces for community building in unique spaces, as well as natural space up- grades to increase engagement with the outdoors. We also heard a lot of energy for adapting the spaces we’d conceived towards the school and kids programs.

Concept Redesign: Project Bloom

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Responding to the community needs, Daniel and I went back to the drawing table and reinvented our plans. The result: Project Bloom: growing friendship, unity, and community at Ohavi Zedek. The project was composed of three key zones.

1) Outdoor gathering for adults and teens,

2) outdoor play for the school, and

3) new housing, upgraded thrift shop, and rain-permeable non-flooding overflow parking all sited in the abutting field.

Utilizing the already expressed developer interest, OZ could generate the revenue needed to cover the project in the long term by creating four housing units. Additionally, it was expressed by the community that this housing would be attractive to members of the congregation as they continue to age.

Community Reception

The community loved the concept for Project Bloom and held onto the documents. Just a few months later, they began working on it and constructed the first yurt, pictured on the right at it’s opening celebration. To our delight, many of the themes expressed in our vision tools have now appeared in OZ’s Imagine 2025 plan.