Sukkah City was an

Architectural design competition An architectural design competition is a type of design competition in which an organization that intends on constructing a new building invites architects to submit design proposals. The winning design is usually chosen by an independent panel ...

"Gimme Shelter: Architects Reimagine the Sukkah"
Christopher Hawthorne, August 19, 2010, ''Los Angeles Times'' (blog). and work of

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

planned in partnership with the Union Square Partnership for

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Union Square Park Union Square is a historic intersection and surrounding neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, located where Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway and Bowery, the former Bowery Road – now Park Avenue, Fourth Avenue – came together in ...

in September 2010.

Overview

A committee of art critics and architects selected 12 winners from a field of over 600 entries. The twelve winning entries were constructed at Brooklyn's Gowanus Studio Space, and driven by truck to Union Square Park for display on September 19 and 20, 2010, from dawn to dusk. The design chosen as "the people's choice" stood, starting on September 22, 2010, for the seven days of the

Jewish holiday Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' ( he, ימים טובים, , Good Days, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed in Judaism and by JewsThis article focuses on practices of mainst ...

of Sukkot."A Sukkah Bound for New York"
Samuel Gruber, June 23, 2010, '' Forward'' (July 2, 2010). Some entries were also selected for display at the Center for Architecture in New York City during September. Journalists Joshua Foer"Holiday Tradition Meets Modern Design"
Pia Catton, June 8, 2010, ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

''. and Roger Bennett conceived the competition, an
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an organization that promotes Jewish culture (and which Bennett co-founded), sponsored it.
Fred Bernstein, September 16, 2010, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. Retrieved August 15, 2018. A

sukkah A or succah (; he, סוכה ; plural, ' or ''sukkos'' or ''sukkoth'', often translated as "booth") is a temporary hut constructed for use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. It is topped with branches and often well decorated ...

is a structure described in the

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the ...

and used in celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The Torah instructed the

Children of Israel The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

to commemorate their Exodus from Ancient Egypt by dwelling for seven days every autumn in temporary structures reminiscent of those in which they lived during their 40 years of wandering the desert before settling in the

Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine (see also Isr ...

. Many Jews continue this practice. The Sukkah City competition and installation aimed to re-imagine the sukkah in contemporary design. Sukkah City competition was to be documented in a book, ''Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next 3000 Years''. However, the book has yet to be published. ''Sukkah City'', a 2013

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

about the competition directed by Jason Hutt, is distributed by

First Run Features First Run Features is an independent film distribution company based in New York City. History First Run was founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers in order to advance the distribution of independent film. In the 1980s, the company focused ...

and is available for purchase or rental on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

Kanopy Kanopy is an on-demand streaming video platform for public and academic libraries that offers films, TV shows and documentaries. The service is free for users, but content owners and content creators are paid on a pay-per-view model by the in ...

and other sources.

The competition

The competition was launched with an announcement in May 2010. By June hundreds of architects, artists, and designers had entered. The deadline for entries was August 1, 2010. The jury included Rick Bell, Executive Director of the New York Chapter of the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to s ...

Geoff Manaugh BLDGBLOG is an architecture blog authored by futurist Geoff Manaugh, former editor at ''Dwell Dwell may refer to: * ''Dwell'' (album), a 2020 album by Recondite * ''Dwell'' (magazine), a monthly American publication focused on modern archi ...

, a senior editor at ''

Dwell Dwell may refer to: * ''Dwell'' (album), a 2020 album by Recondite * ''Dwell'' (magazine), a monthly American publication focused on modern architecture and design * Dwell (retailer), a leading UK furniture and accessories company * "Dwell" (so ...

'' magazine, architecture critic

Paul Goldberger Paul Goldberger (born in 1950) is an American author, architecture critic and lecturer. He is known for his "Sky Line" column in ''The New Yorker''. Biography Shortly after starting as a reporter at ''The New York Times'' in 1972, he was assign ...

designer Ron Arad, architect

Thom Mayne Thom Mayne (born January 19, 1944) is an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he is a trustee and the coordinator of the Design of Cities po ...

, winner of the

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

, Michael Arad, Allan Chochinov, Matias Corea, Steven Heller,

Natalie Jeremijenko Natalie Jeremijenko (born 1966) is an artist and engineer whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. She is an active member of the net.art movement, and her work primarily explores ...

Maira Kalman Maira Kalman is an American artist, illustrator, writer, and designer known for her painting and writing about the human condition. She is the author and illustrator of over 30 books for adults and children and her work is exhibited in museums a ...

, Thomas de Monchaux,

Ada Tolla Ada Tolla is an Italian-born architect and co-founder (with Giuseppe Lignano) of the architectural design studio LOT-EK. LOT-EK has achieved high visibility for their sustainable and innovative approach to construction, materials, and space and thr ...

and Adam Yarinsky."Sukkah City"
Sam Grawe, ''

'', May 30, 2010. Archived fro
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on February 12, 2012. The rabbinic adviser was Dani Passow.
n.d. Retrieved August 16, 2018. Foer expects the entries to range from "the latest in digital fabrication to handmade craft techniques." During the period when the 12 winners stood in the park, visitors were able to vote for their favorite design."Reimagining Ancient Architecture"
Virginia Prescott, June 29, 2010, ''

New Hampshire Public Radio New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) is the National Public Radio member network serving the state of New Hampshire. NHPR is based in Concord and operates eight transmitters and six translators covering nearly the whole state, as well as portions of ...

''. The "People’s Choice Award" sukkah was entitled ''Fractured Bubble,'' and was designed by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan.

Design requirements

The contest's rules required entries to conform to

Jewish law ''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical comman ...

governing the sukkah: * It must be a temporary structure. * The roof must be made of non-edible plant material. * The roof must be thick enough to shade those sitting inside in daytime, and thin enough so that stars are visible through the roof at night. * The walls must be at least 10 handsbreadth tall, but can be made of any material. The body of a dead

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

can serve as a wall."Taking a New Look at Old Testament Architecture"
Kristi Cameron, June 10, 2010, ''

Metropolis A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. A big c ...

''. * The sukkah can also be built atop a live

camel A camel (from: la, camelus and grc-gre, κάμηλος (''kamēlos'') from Hebrew or Phoenician: גָמָל ''gāmāl''.) is an even-toed ungulate in the genus ''Camelus'' that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. ...

. According to competition organizer Joshua Foer:

The sukkah is a space to ceremonially practice homelessness.... In that sense it is an architecture of both memory and empathy—memory of the huts the Israelites dwelled in during their exodus from Egypt long ago, and empathy for those who live today without solid shelter over their heads. It goes up in the fall, just when it's no longer entirely comfortable to be outside.The last sentence refers to the weather in New York. In Israel, the weather is still warm during Sukkot.

One of the winning entries, the Sukkah of the Signs designed by architects Ronald Rael and

Virginia San Fratello Virginia San Fratello (b. 1971, Savannah, Georgia) is an American artist known for 3D printing, architecture, and ceramics. She attended North Carolina State University and Columbia University. She collaborates with Ronald Rael under the name ...

, clad the sukkah structure with several hundred homeless signs collected from the homeless around the United States.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Roger Bennett article in Tablet

Sukkah City competition website

NPR interview with project organizer

Sukkah City featured on Archinect

Video

* ttp://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/tradition-meets-modernity-in-new-york-s-sukkah-city-competition-1.314685 Sukkah City feature in Haaretz Sukkot Architectural competitions