2023
The Sukkahs
SUKKAH TEAM 01
One Lawndale Gathering Tree
Community Collaborator:
One Lawndale Children’s Discovery Center
Design Contributor:
Sukkah as Playscape
One Lawndale Gathering Tree is a space of togetherness that pays homage to the harvest celebration of Sukkot and brings the symbolic Tree of Life to the neighborhood. With a design inspired by a series of workshops with Lawndale youth, the Tree offers both a room for reflection and a place for projection. Like a tree changing through the seasons, the fabric foliage adapts, at times draping to shroud a singular space and other times gathering at the center to shade an open place. After the Festival, the Tree will be replanted at the forthcoming One Lawndale Children’s Discovery Center’s rooftop garden as a beacon of growth and abundance for the neighborhood, with the potential to support different types of programming. Each of the Tree’s four sides is adorned with artwork by Lawndale youth representing different scales of community: the self, the neighborhood, and the city. The Gathering Tree invites the public to sit and stay a while on its Star of David picnic quilt—a communal surface for the sharing of food, stories, and experiences during and after the festival.
SUKKAH TEAM 02
One To Many / Many To One
Community Collaborator:
North Lawndale Greening Committee + YMEN
Design Contributor:
Sukkah as Living Museum
Slum Busters Garden’s One To Many / Many To One (O2M/M2O) is an homage to the collective work that Gerald Earles, Lorean Earles, and the North Lawndale residents put forth to make up for the lack of support and understanding from the authorities administering and planning the city. O2M/M2O is both a political act and an act of love. Each stick and knot that allows the structure to stand represents the North Lawndale people and the engagement they have taken toward one another and toward the land. The historic Slum Busters Garden is a living museum. It is the birthplace of the Chicago community garden movement. It is a teaching site for the next generation of activists, landscape designers, architects, urban gardeners, and peacemakers. The sukkah tells the stories of those people and this engagement. Now post-Festival, the sukkah is permanently installed at Slum Busters Garden and is visible from the CTA Pink Line trains passing above. Its brightly colored panels inspire others to join the movement, as the garden’s stewards have done for the past 40 years.
SUKKAH TEAM 03
I AM BLOOMING
Community Collaborator:
Design Contributors:
Akima Brackeen + Office of Things
Sukkah as Meditation Pavilion
I AM BLOOMING weaves together the rich traditions of African, African-American, and Jewish cultures, celebrating their shared values of communal gathering and the cyclical nature of life. In African and African-American cultures, these gatherings have been a central aspect of community life, where participants arrange themselves in circular formations to foster a sense of unity and togetherness through rituals of ring shouts, drumming circles, rap cyphers, and healing circles. In parallel, the Jewish holiday of Sukkot embraces impermanence both in the realm of time and the built environment by commemorating the seasonal harvest, and encouraging a deep connection with nature and community, cycles of growth, and the transitory nature of materiality and the human experience. By acknowledging the cyclical rhythms of life, I AM BLOOMING creates a unique space for grounding, reflection, and mindfulness. Visitors are invited to rotate the built-in benches/planters, to reconfigure the space for different types of gatherings and to make the space their own. After the Festival, the sukkah will serve as an outdoor meditation pavilion at I AM ABLE, a faith-based trauma-informed care agency providing services from birth to the end-of-life.
SUKKAH TEAM 04
Sukkah Of Connectedness
Community Collaborator:
BBF | Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts
Design Contributor:
Sukkah as Historical Maker
The Sukkah Of Connectedness manifests the role of Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts (formerly known as the Better Boys Foundation) in the lives of the residents of North Lawndale. Joseph Kellman, a man of Jewish descent, founded BBF in 1961 as an organization to transform the lives of the inner-city youths in the neighborhood he grew up in. The sukkah exemplifies the interrelatedness and connectedness of the Jewish and African-American cultures and struggles. Both cultures migrated to Chicago seeking better lives and new opportunities. There is a strong sense of spirituality that helped to uplift and guide them during their struggles and a deep tradition of civic responsibility in their communities. The Sukkah of Connectedness is built to symbolize the cross-cultural connections of community and a oneness among all generations and peoples and represents a thirst to transcend, uplift, and grow through adversity. The co-design team engaged in a series of oral history workshops, led by the Chicago History Museum. Visitors can listen to recordings of these intergenerational stories. Now post-Festival, the sukkah is re-installed in the central courtyard of BBF’s headquarters where it serves as a historical maker of cogenerational creativity and an observation deck to view “Untitled (Circulation),” a wall installation and new work by Kerry James Marshall that lines the perimeter of the courtyard.
SUKKAH TEAM 05
A Season Is Set For Everything
Community Collaborator:
Mishkan Chicago + Lawndale Christian Community Church + Lawndale Christian Legal Center
Design Contributor:
Architecture For Public Benefit + Trent Fredrickson Architecture
Sukkah as Community Memorial
This sukkah reflects the interfaith collaboration and intertwined histories of the Jewish and Christian communities that participated in its design. During the Festival, the sukkah serves as a space for shared worship and learning. After the Festival, the sukkah will be relocated to Lawndale Christian Legal Center where it will serve as a memorial honoring the lives of young community members that have been lost to violence. The project is anchored in Ecclesiastes 3, a shared scripture that is read during the holiday of Sukkot and during times of transition and remembrance. The walls of the structure act as storage vessels and provide moments of connection, storytelling, and remembrance. Visitors are invited to discover the individual perspectives of each community member that contributes an artifact to the walls, to add an artifact reflecting their own experience, and to celebrate life’s varied and ever-changing seasons.
SUKKAH TEAM 06
It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood Toolshed
Community Collaborator:
Design Contributor:
Sukkah as Tool Library Demo Station
It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Toolshed is a sukkah for displaying, retrieving, and animating a collection of loanable equipment from the Chicago Tool Library, a non-profit lending library of things based in Chicago’s west-side that provides equitable access to tools, equipment, and information, allowing all Chicagoans to learn, share, and create. The installation consists of a criss-crossing pattern of marine plywood ribs, shaped into a cocoon-like, welcoming enclosure. Colorful, reconfigurable shelves snap into the installation to create shapely nooks and crannies for storing tools and artifacts. After the conclusion of the Festival, the sukkah will be relocated and re-installed at the Chicago Tool Library’s headquarters, where it will facilitate a permanent tool demonstration station and scenic backdrop for instructional videos that feature items from the Chicago Tool Library’s inventory.
Location
All events take place at James Stone Freedom Square, located at the intersection of Douglas Boulevard and Millard Avenue (3615 W Douglas Blvd, Chicago, IL 60623).