Returning for its third edition on Sunday, October 6, 2024, the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival pairs community organizations in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood with diverse architectural designers to design and construct sukkahs, small outdoor pavilions built for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Working collaboratively, teams explore design literacy, social justice, and neighborhood futuring. The Festival celebrates cultural heritage and amplifies solidarity among the Jewish community who lived in North Lawndale historically, the predominantly Black community that resides there today, and the broader Chicago community. It engages the neighborhood’s multicultural history, builds interfaith partnerships, and elevates the role of design in building an anti-racist city. During the Festival, the landscape of unique sukkah structures is activated with cross-cultural public programming bringing together intersectional pairings of neighborhood groups. 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, such as a garden pergola, rooftop playscape, heritage museum, meditation pavilion, community memorial, and tool library.
From October 6–26, the sukkahs are open daily from 10:00 am–5:00 pm. Five public programs during the run of show offer specific opportunities to engage deeper with the structures, the designers, the community partners, and the communal celebration.
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An initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with artists and organizations across the city, Art Design Chicago is a series of events and exhibitions that highlight the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
