New Mexico Jewish LinkPublished by the Jewish Federation of New Mexico

Designing Sacred Space: An Architect's Green Synagogue in New Mexico

Around the high desert plateaus of central New Mexico, where sagebrush gives way to adobe walls and crisp blue skies stretch above the Sandia Mountains, a small but determined congregation spent years dreaming about a building that would honour both tradition and the earth beneath it. Their vision became reality when the doors opened to a synagogue unlike the rest — the first in the state to earn LEED certification, a credential that signals rigorous environmental performance. At the centre of that achievement stands an architect whose Jewish identity, professional training, and quiet conviction shaped every beam, window, and clerestory.

That building matters to communities far beyond the American Southwest. Jewish congregations in Sydney's eastern suburbs, Melbourne's bayside precincts, and Brisbane's riverfront neighbourhoods have watched sustainability move from a niche concern into a mainstream expectation, particularly as Australian councils tighten requirements around energy efficiency and water-sensitive design. For architects Down Under, the New Mexico project offers a case study in how sacred space can meet the most demanding green benchmarks without compromising the warmth and intimacy that worshippers expect.

The synagogue in question sits on a sloped parcel north of Santa Fe, where the climate swings from sub-freezing winter nights to scorching summer afternoons. Heating and cooling typically dominate a building's energy footprint in such a setting, and conventional synagogues often rely on heavy mechanical systems to maintain comfort. This one does not. Its passive solar orientation, super-insulated envelope, and carefully placed thermal mass do most of the work, with a small, high-efficiency system providing backup. The result feels both ancient and forward-looking — a fitting paradox for a community rooted in texts older than the building itself.

Behind this achievement is an architect who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, when the American Jewish community was rediscovering its environmental ethic through figures like Rabbi Arthur Waskow and the early Jewish environmental movement. He grew up attending High Holiday services in a converted warehouse, learned Talmud in a cramped classroom above a delicatessen, and later watched his own children ask pointed questions about why their synagogue's roof leaked heat into the New Mexico winter. Those questions became the seed of the project.

LEED Level Approximate points Typical features Fit for a small congregation
Certified 40–49 Basic efficiency, some daylighting Achievable with a limited budget
Silver 50–59 Improved envelope, water reduction A balanced mix of cost and performance
Gold 60–79 Robust energy modelling, renewable-ready A common target for community buildings
Platinum 80+ Net-zero capable, deep commissioning Aspirational, with a long payback period

A Childhood Shaped by Texts and Buildings

The architect was raised in a household where Jewish learning and craftsmanship sat side by side. His father was a contractor who specialised in restoring mid-century homes in the San Fernando Valley; his mother led a weekly Torah study that drew neighbours from across their Orthodox and Conservative backgrounds. Meals were long, conversations louder, and questions about kashrut, kavanah, and the precise meaning of bal tashchit — the prohibition against wasteful destruction — came up almost as often as the gefilte fish.

By his teenage years, he was sketching floor plans for his grandparents' small synagogue in the Pico-Robertson neighbourhood, imagining how a mechitzah could be reshaped to give women better sightlines without compromising halachic separation. Those early drawings were clumsy, but they revealed a habit of mind that would define his career: a refusal to treat religious requirements as obstacles, and a conviction that they were invitations to design more thoughtfully.

After high school, he spent a year in Jerusalem at a yeshiva before enrolling in architecture school at the University of Texas. The Texas climate, with its own brutal summers and surprising freezes, taught him that buildings had to work with the sun, not against it. He also spent time at a kibbutz in the Negev, where agricultural structures had to be functional, beautiful, and frugal all at once.

Training in Sustainable Practice

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when sustainable design was still a fringe pursuit, the architect joined a small firm in Albuquerque that specialised in adobe restoration and passive solar design. The Southwest's centuries-old building traditions — thick walls, small windows facing south, courtyards that moderated temperature — turned out to be a sustainable design library, long before anyone called it that. He learned to read those buildings as living documents, and to combine their wisdom with computer modelling tools that were just becoming available.

A fellowship in 1996 took him to study under a renowned German engineer known for passive house principles. That training sharpened his focus on airtight envelopes, super-insulation, and ventilation heat recovery. He brought those techniques back to New Mexico, where he used them first on a community centre for a Pueblo-Jewish dialogue group, then on a series of private homes, and finally on the synagogue that would become his signature work.

The Australian parallel is worth noting. In Melbourne, where the National Construction Code now mandates progressively higher thermal performance standards for new buildings, architects trained in passive house principles have found a ready market. The same is true in Canberra, where the territory's stringent energy efficiency provisions have produced a generation of designers fluent in the same vocabulary. The New Mexico architect's path reflects an international shift in how designers think about climate, comfort, and cost.

A Practice Rooted in Place

His firm has remained small by choice, taking on only a few projects each year so that each one can receive sustained attention. Most commissions come through word of mouth, often from rabbinical connections or community leaders who have visited his work. The practice has become known for what he calls "vernacular modernism" — buildings that draw on regional traditions of thick walls, deep eaves, and shaded courtyards while expressing a contemporary sensibility.

He has lectured widely, including at conferences in Sydney and Perth where Australian practitioners have compared notes on heritage conservation overlays, bushfire construction standards, and the rising cost of conventional materials. In Adelaide, where state heritage protections complicate renovations to older synagogues, his measured approach has drawn particular interest.

The Synagogue Itself

The building sits on a south-facing slope, its long axis oriented to capture low winter sun while shading itself from the punishing July and August glare. The sanctuary is partially embedded into the hillside, which serves as natural thermal mass. A roof of reflective TPO membrane reduces heat gain, while a rooftop photovoltaic array, sized to cover most annual electricity consumption, was financed through a combination of congregational pledges and a state energy programme.

Inside, daylight dominates. A series of clerestory windows, oriented to avoid direct glare on the bimah, fills the sanctuary with soft, even light for most of the day. When artificial lighting is needed, LEDs dimmed through a daylight-sensing system keep consumption low. Plumbing fixtures cut potable water use by about 40 percent compared with code baseline, and the landscaping relies on native xeric plants, drawing on the same plant palette that pre-Columbian communities used to thrive in the same soil.

The sanctuary seats 220, with a women's section and a men's section separated by a mechitzah that doubles as a structural and acoustic element. An aron kodesh built from reclaimed regional wood anchors the eastern wall, and a community room opens onto a shaded patio where children learn Hebrew through the long summer afternoons. The project earned a Gold rating, a level the architect considered realistic given budget constraints.

Jewish Values Driving the Design

For the architect, sustainability is not a stylistic add-on but a religious obligation. He often cites bal tashchit, the Torah's commandment against wasteful destruction, as a foundational text for his work. He also draws on the teaching of the Chiddushei HaRim, the late-eighteenth-century Gerer rebbe, that a person who leaves a lamp burning when leaving a room is said to act as if he had burnt the world. Such sources shape not only his material choices but also the way he briefs clients.

Jewish tradition, of course, does not speak of kilowatt-hours or carbon footprints directly. It does, however, speak constantly of responsibility — to neighbours, to guests, to the stranger, to the land itself. The architect translates them into today's language without flattening their meaning. For him, the question is not whether a synagogue can be sustainable, but how a synagogue can be authentically itself while honouring the imperative to tread gently on the earth.

Reception and Challenges

The project faced scepticism early on. Some congregants worried that green features would inflate costs or delay construction. Others questioned whether so much technical effort was appropriate for a house of prayer. The architect responded by holding open design sessions, walking the community through trade-offs in plain language, and inviting rabbinical input on every decision that touched ritual practice. Costs did rise modestly, but the building's operational savings began to offset the premium within a few years.

In Australia, where the Green Building Council of Australia runs the parallel Green Star rating system and where BASIX in New South Wales imposes strict water and energy targets on residential builds, similar conversations are unfolding in congregations from Sydney's North Shore to Perth's coastal suburbs. The New Mexico experience suggests that patience and a willingness to translate technical detail into communal meaning can carry a project through scepticism.

Lessons for Communities Building Now

What might other congregations take from this work? A few practical lessons emerge.

Strategies that shaped the project:

Jewish sources that informed the design:

For Jewish communities weighing new buildings or major renovations, the New Mexico synagogue suggests that sustainability and tradition need not compete. They can, in fact, reinforce one another when designers take seriously both the science of efficient buildings and the texts that call human beings to live lightly on the earth. The most enduring legacy of the project may not be its kilowatt-hours saved or its litres of water conserved, but the way it has reframed what a synagogue can be — a building that serves its community without diminishing the wider world that community inhabits.