Islamic Center Design — thirty years of designing and building for Muslim communities in America

Free guide: Ten Mistakes a Board Should Never Make

From real projects and real boardrooms across thirty years — the mistakes that cost communities years and fortunes, and what to do instead. Yours free, before your board makes number three.

For every seat at the table

Read

Short weekly pieces — one true story, two takeaways, five minutes.

Learn

Free guides for boards, building committees, and the architects who serve them.

The Book

The complete guide — what the building means, who builds it, and how. Coming Fall 2026, insha'Allah.

Workshops

For boards planning a project, and for architects entering this building type.

Consultancy

Owner's-side advice: hiring your architect, reviewing your master plan, testing your program.

The Master Plan Service — the first step, provided alone

A community in Palm Beach already had a planner's site plan. What they needed was the step that protects everything after it: the conceptual master plan. We set the qibla, kept the entry and the small parking lot they had — expanding it, not redoing it — kept the required landscape preserve, organized the buildings around a courtyard, created the wall, and drew the phases: a space that serves as a basketball court today and becomes a building tomorrow.

Then your architect — anywhere — takes the road map and designs the building. His plans, his creativity, his style. The concept does the protecting: follow the road map and most of the goals are achieved before the first sketch. We stay with the project lightly — the whole concept explained upfront (here is what's important, here is what is not), a couple of one-hour virtual working sessions, and a review of the plans at the end.

Before — the site plan the community had (by others)

After — the conceptual master plan: qibla, courtyard, wall, phases

The book is coming

A complete guide to designing and building Islamic centers in the West — what the building means, the people who decide, the money, the approvals, the elements, and the case studies of projects that took decades and kept their promises. Not a book of standards you can Google — a book of solutions lived on real sites. Fall 2026, insha'Allah. Join the list above to be told first.

What makes a building a mosque?