Sukkah City STL

This post first appeared as “Visionary Sukkahs in St. Louis” on The Arty Semite blog of the Forward.

‘60 degree Sukkah’ by Filip Tejchman (Photo courtesy of Sukkah City STL)

A year after a sensational debut in New York’s Union Square Park last year, the “Sukkah City” idea has made its way westward to St. Louis. The 10 winners of the “Sukkah City STL” design competition were announced October 4, and they are now in the midst of installing their structures on the campus of Washington University. The projects will be on view October 18 to 22.

The cutting edge sukkot were selected from among more than 40 entries submitted by architects and designers from all over the U.S. “Each of the proposals, in their own way have re-imagined the ancient sukkah, using it as a canvas to explore the role boundaries define what it means to be human,” said Rabbi Andrew Kastner of St. Louis Hillel, which co-sponsored the competition with the university’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and The Museum of ImaJewnation. Additional support has come from the St. Louis Jewish Community Center and by the Sam Fox School’s Charles and Bunny Burson Art Fund.

Click here to read more.

© 2011 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Occupying A Sukkah At The Hyatt

This post first appeared as “Protest Sukkah Rises at Chicago Hyatt” on The Shmooze blog of the Forward.

They may be occupying Wall Street with a sukkah in New York, but in Chicago the protest sukkah is at the Hyatt Regency. That is where the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual meeting is being held this week, and Jewish activists figured the hotel was the best place to make their point about the need for the real estate industry to help struggling families keep their homes.

The activists — among them rabbis and cantors who insisted the erection of the temporary structure outside the hotel constituted a demonstration and not a protest — invited bankers to eat meals with them in it, and to meet with individuals affected by the housing crisis.

Click here to read more.

© 2011 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Sukkah In The City

This post first appeared as “‘Sukkah in the City’ Comes to Times Square” on The Shmooze blog of the Forward. It was reprinted in Haaretz.

Times Square just got more crowded…at least for the next week or so. Stonehenge Partners, owners and operators of luxury apartment buildings in New York, are building “Sukkah in the City,” reportedly the first sukkah ever to be erected at the Crossroads of the World.

Inspired by the unique designs that were on view at Sukkah City in Union Square last year, this sukkah will have a façade featuring giant sunflowers, ladybugs and a blue sky — in what can be assumed to be a nod to the agricultural origins of the holiday and an ode to nature in the middle of the concrete jungle.

Click here to read more.

© 2011 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.