Wesleyan Sukkah

A temporary structure erected every fall for Sukkot – the annual feast of tabernacles – the sukkah offers students a place to pray, study, eat, sleep, dwell, and socialize. The client needed the structure to accommodate these activities, also emphasizing that the sukkah be welcoming to all and, finally, that it be halachic - built to the specifications of the rabbinic code.

The sukkah was designed and built to harmonize with the surrounding landscape - to be inviting, approachable, and intriguing to anyone walking by - while simultaneously maintaining the “intentional sacred space” and privacy expected for the sukkah’s religious users. Beyond the requirements for its religious use, the Wesleyan Sukkah also needed to accommodate 50 people, withstand outdoor exposure, repeated assembly and disassembly, and store easily.

The final design is sited at the top of a publicly accessible hill that is both serene and social.  The Sukkah’s simplicity of construction and ephemeral tectonics reinforce its historical ties to nomadic huts, while its explicit impermanence encourages both introspection on the fragility of human life and an awareness of the vastness of the built and natural world of which it is a part.