Sukkah City: 12 Radically Re-Imagined Traditional Jewish Shelters For Sukkot.

above: a modern sukkah, Fractured Bubble, by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan was "Fan favorite"

Thanks to Ren and her wonderful blog, Lady of The Arts, I have learned about 'Sukkah City', an international design competition which took place last week in New York to re-imagine Sukkahs, the temporary shelters or dwellings built during the week-long traditional Jewish Festival Of Sukkot to commemorate the homelessness that occurred during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.

It's not easy to describe a Sukkah, so I'll let this video by Liz Nord do it for you:

Traditional sukkahs:


624 people from 43 countries entered the competition. The 12 temporary structures that were chosen as the winning designs by a very impressive jury (listed later in this post) were constructed in Union Square Park’s South Plaza and were displayed publicly on September 19th and 20th (one of them, P.YGROS.C, collapsed immediately after construction). Here are the 12 winning concepts.

Gathering by Dale Suttle, So Sugita, Ginna Nguyen:

LOG by Kyle May and Scott Abrahams:

Blo Puff by Bittertang:

P.YGROS.C / passive hygroscopic curls by THEVERYMANY / Marc Fornes with Jared Laucks:

In Tension by SO-IL:

Sukkah of the Signs by Ronald Rael, Virginia San Fratello:

Star Cocoon by Volkan Alkanoglu:

Single Thread by Matter Practice:

Shim Sukkah by tinder, tinker:

Repetition meets Difference | Stability meets Volatileness by Matthias Karc:

Time/Timeless by Peter Sagar:

Fractured Bubble by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan:

See all of the impressive entrants from 43 countries here.

Reality Disappoints?
While the concept of Sukkah City is fresh and exciting, some of the more common criticisms of the event were that the discrepancy between the impressive renderings and actual built structures were fairly great-- the completed buildings were disappointing when compared with the imagined concepts.

The Gathering Sukkah as imagined and as realized:


"Log" was one of the few designs that remained faithful to the original rendering:


The blog Human's Scribbles has great good side-by-side comparisons of the renderings with the completed structures.



The two day display culminated with Mayor Bloomberg announcing “Fractured Bubble,” a design created by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan of Long Island City, Queens, as the “People’s Choice” winner:



The following photos from the event are courtesy of Benjamin Norman for the New York Times, who published this article on the event:

above: a panoramic view of the event

above: peeking inside the Shim Sukkah

above: the Blo Puff sukkah, a far cry from the original rendering

The process and results of the competition, along with construction documentation and critical essays, will be published in the forthcoming book "Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next Three Thousand Years."

The jury consisted of these impressive designers, illustrators, architects and writers:
* Michael Arad
* Ron Arad
* Rick Bell
* Allan Chochinov
* Matias Corea
* Paul Goldberger
* Steven Heller
* Natalie Jeremijenko
* Maira Kalman
* Geoff Manaugh
* Thom Mayne
* Thomas de Monchaux
* Ada Tolla
* Adam Yarinsky

Next year, Sukkah City will expand from New York City to cities all around the world. If your community would like to be part of Sukkah City 2011, please contact them at sukkahcity@gmail.com.

To learn who was behind this, the sponsors and more, visit Sukkah City.

Gimme Shelter: Guggenheim & Google's Virtual Design Competition

On the occasion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birthday, June 8, the Guggenheim Museum and Google launched Design It: Shelter Competition, a global, online initiative that invites the public to use Google Earth and Google SketchUp to create and submit designs for virtual 3-D shelters for a location of their choice anywhere on Earth.


above: Ironwood, designed by Chad Cornette, 2000. Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona. Model courtesy the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture

The competition takes its inspiration from Learning By Doing, an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education, which features plans, photographs, and models of shelters built by students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture (like those shown below).


above: Victor Sidy Shelter, 1999. Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona. Photo: Victor Sidy


above: more shelter design examples created by students from the FLW School of Architecture

So..to celebrate the ideas and teaching of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Museum has invited you to create your own virtual shelters, located anywhere on Earth.

Then you can share your design on the Guggenheim’s Web site by first modeling your shelter with Google SketchUp, then placing your model on Google Earth.

Go ahead, give it a try! Here's a tip: When designing your shelter, consider Frank Lloyd Wright’s interest in the connection between architecture and its location. How can your shelter respond to the specific natural and built environments that surround it?

Project Specs
Location: You can build your shelter anywhere on Earth: from city to desert, hill to valley. You cannot remove any existing buildings, but you can add on to existing structures.
Size: Keep your shelter small—it can be no larger than 100 square feet (9.3 square meters), and no taller than 12 feet (3.6 meters).
Amenitites: Your shelter must offer protection from the elements and provide a space for one person to study and sleep. Keep it simple—no water, gas or electricity allowed.

Recent Submissions:

Baobab Tree Shelter:

And its proposed location on earth (image from google earth):

The above submission is from Madrid, Spain and was designed by Angel Delgado. Shelter location: Madagascar, Date submitted: June 11, 2009

Greenegg Shelter:

And its proposed location on earth (image from google earth):

The above submission was designed by Jevgenijs Busins from Riga, Finland. Shelter location: India Date submitted: June 9, 2009

Prizes:
People's prize:
Trip for two to New York City (includes airfare and hotel accommodations for two nights)
Behind-the-scenes tour of the Guggenheim Museum and the Google Offices
Free admission to other NYC museums
Google SketchUp Pro license (USD$495 value)

Juried prize:
$1000 cash prize
Trip for two to New York City (includes airfare and hotel accommodations for two nights)
Behind-the-scenes tour of the Guggenheim Museum and the Google Offices
Free admission to other NYC museums
Google SketchUp Pro license (USD$495 value)

Note: In the event that the same shelter design is chosen by those voting for the People’s Prize and by the experts determining the winner of the Juried Prize, the People’s Prize will be awarded to the entrant who receives the second highest number of votes for the People’s Prize.

How to Enter - To participate in the contest, follow these steps:

• Download Google SketchUp and Google Earth for free. Both are available for both Windows and Macintosh computers.
• Use Google SketchUp to design a shelter for a particular location on the planet. Give your model a precise geographic location with Google Earth. (View the SketchUp tutorial page for instructions.)
• Upload your geographically-located SketchUp shelter to the Google 3D Warehouse.
• Export at least one (and as many as four) views of your model as JPEG images and upload them when you're submitting your entry. (JPEGs should be at least 235 pixels wide but no larger than 720 pixels wide.)
• Export an animation of your shelter as a video and upload it to YouTube. (The animation is optional. Keep in mind, though, that in Google Earth, viewers will only be able to see the outside of the shelter—an animation is a great way to present a more detailed view of your design.)
• Write a description (in English) of your shelter and how it integrates into the location where you placed it (limited to 70 words).
• Fill out the submission form on the Guggenheim Web site.
  

For more detailed instructions on how to prepare and submit your shelter, please download the submission guide (PDF).