Synagogue for a Gay Congregation Designed With Acoustics in Mind Since 1973, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah has tried to reconcile traditions transmitted across the millennia with traditions that its members - gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews - have often had to make up on the fly, battling hostility, indifference and the AIDS epidemic at the same time. "Radical traditionalism" is the phrase used by Sharon Kleinbaum, the senior rabbi, to describe the philosophical arc of the 1,100-member congregation. Fine words. But what does "radical traditionalism" look like in three-dimensional volumes, in concrete and glass and wood? The answers are to be revealed on Friday when the leaders of Beit Simchat Torah show off the design, by the Architecture Research Office, for their synagogue and community center. The congregation will occupy a three-level storefront space at 130 West 30th Street, a designated landmark in the garment district. It bought the space as a condominium last year for $7.1 million. The sanctuary itself will be at the back of the building. With a small balcony, the hall will hold about 290 people. They will face a roughly textured cast concrete wall that is gently canted outward to capture daylight coming into the building's rear yard. The ark will occupy a large niche that appears to have been carved out of the wall. Stephen Cassell, a principal in Architecture Research Office, said the angle and the corrugated texture of the rear wall would make it an ideal acoustic baffle, enhancing a space used by a congregation that takes liturgical music quite seriously. "It's not just beautiful," he said, "but it will give you goose bumps when someone starts to sing." Questions have peppered the design process about which traditions trump others. For instance, the initial impulse was naturally to orient the sanctuary so that worshipers faced the site of the first temple in Jerusalem. But that would have resulted in a long, theaterlike configuration with the rear pews far from the bimah, or reading platform. Instead, the architects devised a more intimate layout that permitted pews to wrap around the bimah, even though worshipers will face south as a result. The congregation hopes to win a variance from the Buildings Department to permit a single eight-stall restroom, rather than separate women's and men's rooms, out of sensitivity to those members whose gender identity is not such a simple matter. Referring to the common abbreviation L.G.B.T., Gabriel Blau, the director of development, said, "We take the "T" very seriously." In a development that would certainly have been impossible for the founding members to predict, the new synagogue will include a 625-square-foot classroom for youngsters. The congregation now counts about 200 children among its families, Mr. Blau said. His 4-year-old son is among them. All told, the congregation hopes to raise $17 million to $18 million to cover the entire project, including the purchase. Mr. Blau said that $11 million had been pledged and that construction would not begin until the fund-raising was completed. If that goal is reached quickly, there is a chance that the new synagogue could be open during the congregation's 40th anniversary year. But Passover 2014 may be more realistic. It will be the first time in the congregation's history that it will have a distinctive presence on the street. As it is now, Beit Simchat Torah's small sanctuary, offices and a classroom are tucked into the courtyard of the Westbeth complex, at 57 Bethune Street in the West Village. Shabbat services are held at the Church of the Holy Apostles, Ninth Avenue and West 28th Street, to accommodate the number of worshipers. "Just the fact that we'll be bringing these all together," Mr. Cassell said, "is huge in terms of becoming a shul."