2nd ANNUAL CHICAGO SUKKAH DESIGN FESTIVAL TO OPEN OCTOBER 1
The Festival returns for its second annual cycle at James Stone Freedom Square in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 14, 2023
CHICAGO, IL—On Sunday, October 1, the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival will open for its second cycle. The festival brings together community organizations and architectural designers to construct new interpretations of sukkahs in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, in James Stone Freedom Square (3615 W Douglas Blvd).
Sukkahs are the temporary outdoor structures that are used during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot, the holiday that celebrates the gathering of the harvest and commemorates the miraculous protection provided to Jewish people when they left Egypt.
The festival celebrates how these usually temporary structures can be repurposed to build community in new contexts. It also celebrates the cultural heritage of the neighborhood and builds solidarity among the Jewish community that formerly lived in North Lawndale, the predominantly Black community that resides there today, and the broader Chicago community.
“Defined as a 3-walled temporary shelter with a permeable roof that permits views of the night sky, a sukkah is so much more than its definition. Jewish tradition tells us that the ancient Israelites constructed sukkahs as temporary dwelling places while they wandered in the desert following the Exodus from Egypt. This story establishes the sukkah as an expression of collective identity—of a people in transition between slavery and liberation, rehearsing the kind of world they aspire to create while acknowledging the constraints of their existing context,” explains Joseph Altshuler, founder of The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival. “The Festival honors this nearly six-thousand-year-old tradition of designing collective futures, one sukkah at a time.”
Six Chicago design teams were selected to work collaboratively with local community groups to design a sukkah that reflects themes of social justice and anti-racism. Each team was asked to explore themes of design literacy, social justice, and neighborhood futuring. During the festival, the landscape of unique structures is active with public programs that consider the role of community-engaged design and that bring together Jewish, African, African-American, and many other migratory cultural traditions.
During the Festival days, from October 1–15, the landscape of unique sukkah structures is activated with cross-cultural public programming that brings together intersectional pairings of neighborhood groups. Concurrent with the festival, the Lawndale Pop-Up Spot will feature an exhibit, curated by Miguel Limon, documenting the co-design process used by each of the sukkah design teams. The Pop-Up Spot is located on the same block as the festival at 3601 W. Douglas Blvd. After the Festival, each sukkah is relocated and permanently re-installed at the facilities of the community organizations that co-designed them, as vibrant new program spaces; for example, as a garden pergola, rooftop playscape, heritage museum, meditation pavilion, community memorial, and tool library.
Sukkah contributors to the 2023 Festival include:
• Studio Becker Xu with One Lawndale Children’s Discovery Center
• Odile Compagnon + Erik Newman with YMEN and North Lawndale Greening Committee
• Akima Brackeen + Office of Things with I AM ABLE
• Antwane Lee with Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts
• Architecture for Public Benefit + Trent Fredrickson with Mishkan Chicago + Lawndale Christian Community Church
• Could Be Design with the Chicago Tool Library
The Opening Celebration programming will encourage visitors to experience the six unique sukkahs for the first time and learn more about the Jewish harvest holiday of Sukkot. Over the course of the afternoon, visitors will enjoy food, art-making activities, communal rituals, participatory performances, and more. The full list of programming can be found here.
Opening Celebration schedule:
• 1:00–4:00pm: Artist Rachel Ellison of Bat Sarah Press will lead a make-your-own local lulav workshop; learn about the cultural rituals surrounding these unique harvest bouquets, and take one home with you!
• 1:30–2:00pm: Pastah J of Lawndale Christian Community Church and Rabbi Lizzi of Mishkan Chicago will lead a participatory, interfaith song session.
• 2:00–3:00pm: Norman Teague Design Studios will offer a flag-making workshop inspired by African and African-American quilting practices.
• 3:00–4:00pm: Ytasha Womack, a critically acclaimed author, filmmaker, dancer, and champion of the imagination, will lead a communal Afrofuturist dance experience.
• 3:00–6:00pm: the party continues with the Terrain Biennial block party.
The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival is organized and produced by Could Be Design and Lawndale Pop-Up Spot (LPUS). Could be Design is a Chicago-based design practice directed by Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison that designs seriously playful spaces that build solidarity among multiple communities. Joseph and Zack provide curatorial leadership and architectural design support to the contributing sukkah design teams. LPUS is a community museum in a shipping container, co-founded by Chelsea Ridley and Jonathan Kelley. LPUS is a space for exhibits featuring art, history, social issues, and more, by and for the community of North Lawndale. LPUS’s goal is to help reimagine how museums serve communities, while contributing to ongoing revitalization efforts by the North Lawndale neighborhood.
The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival is made possible by the generous support of The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation; Crown Family Philanthropies; Innovation 80; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Voices: The Chicago Jewish Teen Foundation; Chicago Architecture Biennial; Jewish United Fund; and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
