Designing a Chabad house with the Rabbi, the board, and the donors in the room

Every Chabad house project has three rooms in it before a single wall is drawn. There is the vision in the Shliach’s head, built from years of Shabbos tables that outgrew the dining room. There is the board’s spreadsheet, where the vision meets governance, insurance, and a budget. And there is the donor’s question, asked politely at a parlor meeting: what exactly am I funding? A successful building process is the art of getting those three rooms to agree — and the design itself is the instrument of agreement.

HH Designers has designed more Chabad houses than any other interior design firm. What follows is the process we have refined across those projects for aligning Rabbi, board, and donors without grinding the mission to a halt.

Start with the program, not the building

The first meeting is never about square footage. It is about the calendar: what happens in this building on a regular Tuesday, on Shabbos, on Purim, during the Pesach rush, at a bar mitzvah, on the night a donor is honored. We map the real weekly and annual rhythm of the Chabad house — meals, minyanim, classes, youth programs, women’s events, holiday surges — and let the building emerge from the program. When the board sees the program documented, budget conversations change: square footage stops being an abstraction and becomes Tuesday night.

Fix the halachic requirements first

The fastest way to lose a year is to let halachic requirements surface mid-design. We put them on the table in week one as fixed constraints: the mikvah and its construction requirements, the kosher kitchen’s separations, the mechitzah, the orientation of the aron kodesh. Boards respect constraints that are named early and explained clearly; what breeds friction is discovering them after the concept everyone loved turns out to be unbuildable. With the non-negotiables fixed, everything else becomes a genuine choice — and choices are where boards do their best work.

Renderings are fundraising infrastructure

A capital campaign runs on images. Long before construction documents exist, we produce photorealistic renderings of the spaces donors care most about: the main hall set for Shabbos, the children’s wing, the entry with the community’s name in it. These renderings do three jobs at once. They give the Shliach something to show at every parlor meeting. They give the campaign committee a consistent visual identity for brochures and pledge cards. And they quietly resolve design debates — it is much easier to agree on a room you can see. Our rendering practice exists in large part because of what it does for community campaigns.

Design naming opportunities into the architecture

Naming is not signage bolted on at the end; it is a design layer. A campaign needs a ladder of opportunities — the building, the hall, the kitchen, the library, the mikvah suite, individual classrooms, even the coat room — and each needs a moment in the architecture where recognition feels dignified rather than transactional. We design donor walls, dedication moments, and material palettes that make a name look like it belongs. When the campaign committee can hand a donor a rendering with their family’s name already set into the limestone, conversations close.

Phase the building to match the campaign

Most communities cannot fund the full vision on day one, and pretending otherwise produces buildings that stall at the framing stage. We design the complete master plan first, then cut it into phases that track realistic fundraising: the social hall and catering kitchen that generate momentum and revenue first, the sanctuary or mikvah next, education wing after. The discipline is making each phase feel finished — a community should never daven in a building that apologizes for itself — while power, plumbing, and structure quietly wait for the next phase. Donors respond to master plans: they can see where their gift sits in something larger.

Give the board what boards need

Boards move on documentation. We produce budgets tied to drawings, finish schedules with real alternates priced, and a Spec Book that lets multiple contractors bid the same scope. That transparency is not bureaucracy — it is how a volunteer board says yes with confidence, and how the Shliach avoids being personally blamed for every change order. Our process gives the committee scheduled decision points instead of an open-ended stream of questions.

Protect the warmth

The quiet danger in any committee-driven project is that the building becomes an institution. A Chabad house is a home first — that is the entire point of the model — and warmth is the design requirement least likely to have a advocate in a budget meeting. It is our job to be that advocate: the residential-scale lighting, the dining room that feels like a family table even at sixty settings, the multipurpose room that turns institutional efficiency into hospitality. Boards fund buildings; communities return to homes.

If your community is somewhere between a vision and a campaign, we have sat at that table many times. See our Chabad house design practice and built examples, or start the conversation whenever you are ready.