NJIT Architecture Teams Win Princeton Sukkah Design Contest
Jose Merino’s hands may never be this callused again. He’s leading one of two teams of NJIT architecture students to design and construct a 10x10 wooden hut called a “Sukkah” in rabinic tradition, for a design competition in Princeton later this month called “Sukkah Village 2021.”
“I’ve always wanted to do a design competition that involved us actually building it,” said Merino of his team’s project, “A Windowed Sukkah.” The design team includes Daniela Liberato and Albert Dorman Honors Scholars, Claudia AbouDiwan, and Silas McBride.
“The Sukkah competition stood out for me because it was a reasonable and believable scale,” said Merino. “Something we could actually build.”
A Sukkah is a tent-like structure originally used during harvest season and later as shelters in the 40-year period after the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. Nowadays, the Sukkah is used as part of the festival of Sukkot, one of the three annual pilgrimage festivals. The teams designed their Sukkahs based on the rabinic code and for three primary uses: eating, sleeping and gathering.
The parameters of the design contest, which students started work on in the spring, make a Sukkah construction more complicated than it seems at first glance. The students tinkered with their prototypes over and over again to meet these limitations. For instance, the Sukkah roof must be made of leaves or branches of a tree or plant, or something that’s no longer attached. At night, the inhabitant must be able to see the stars through the roof. It must be capable of disassembly and transport and, of course, must be made from kosher materials.
“We were excited to work on a project with cultural significance,” said Michael Barrio, who is leading the other winning design project, called “Celestial Tensility,” with Jaison Desai, Kyle Schmitt, Reyne Bennett, Jude Cullen, and Luis Enriquez.
The two teams came up with very different designs that are equally effective and equally deserving of contest victory. “A Windowed Sukkah” looks like a fancy plywood dining patio, and is very much a traditional structure. “Celestial Tensility,” on the other hand, is a contemporary take on the Sukkah concept. It looks like an all-white pergola held together with boat sails. It is simultaneously open and private.
"We were excited to work on a project with cultural significance." - Michael Barrio
“The sails are fabrics that overlap one another and blur the line between a canopy and a wall,” said Barrio. “They aren’t touching the ground. That allowed us to hint at an exterior space that creates what you can interpret as a wall.”
“Our team designed a partial envelope so the structure can be open, vulnerable and contained at the same time,” said Silas McBride of his team’s “A Windowed Sukkah.” To meet the design requirement of creating more shade than sun, the team used kosher woven bamboo mats and a bolted wood design that allows space between the planks of wood for light to come through.
“You do some notching and start to create receptive elements,” said Silas. “So we're getting trained on how to use chisels.”
The students have been learning woodworking skills while constructing their Sukkahs at the MakerSpace and the woodshop at the Hillier College of Architecture and Design.
“Wooshop helps because a lot of people don’t think of joints when they’re assembling things,” said Benjamin Mui, who manages the woodshop at the Hillier College and assisted the “Celestial Tensility” design team. “This group particularly is figuring out ways to join their 2x4s because their models don't incorporate screws or brackets. Unless they do it, they won’t understand what joints make the strongest connections and where there are possible failures.”
“A lot of the degree programs at NJIT are leading to careers and positions where they will have to design and manufacture items to solve problems, whether that’s physical things or computer systems,” said MakerSpace Manager, Justin Suriano, who helped the Sukkah design students learn how to use a drill press to cut joints and a miter press to cut wooden beams. “Those need to become real working processes. MakerSpace is the starting point for that. You can prototype here. You get to know the process.”
The teams will assemble their fully constructed Sukkahs at the Princeton Sukkah Village. Eleven Sukkahs will be on display at Sukkah Village 2021 from September 19 to September 30 on public sites around downtown Princeton, NJ. Sukkahs designs and constructed by professional architecture and design firms will also be on display.
