Posted by Repetition meets Difference _Award winning project
Location _New York City _Union Square Park | USA
Our design reflects the original meaning of the word Sukkah and the associated verb skk, which, depending on its relative context, means BRAIDED or ACANTHACEOUS, PRICKLY, SPINOUS BRUSH. The word sukkah then means not only a small hut, constructed by human beings, but even a natural thicket, a coppice. Our sukkah adverts to the famous Knot-studies of Konrad Wachsmann, a german jewish architect and engineer. He was born in Germany and had to immigrate to the USA during the second world war, living there since 1941. He designed the wooden ‘packaged house system’ together with Walter Gropius. Wachsmann made multiple research investigations towards intelligent and UNIVERSAL KNOTS at the Universities of Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles.
Our design attempts to get an expressive shape out of only three wooden Wachsmann-KNOTS. The countries of origin for the types of wood we have chosen, is Israel on the one hand (olive) and the USA on the other (walnut and maple). The three kinds of simple wooden KNOTS generate an astonishing FREEFORMED MESHWORK, which stabilizes itself by physical COMPLEXITY and INTERWEAVEMENT. The emanation of our Sukkah is at the same time FIRM and EPHEMERAL. So is the jewish ritual of the sukkot.
Article in the NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Repetition meets difference by Matthias Karch captures the spirit and image of the original bedouin Sukka, which they build in the desert. The structure of the plants and trees that are always there to provide thatch captures the repetition, while the diversified way the thatch is integrated idiosyncratically into the structure represents the difference with which every additional year’s Sukka is built. It is a very original improvisation of the basic theme.
Sukkah City video
OZA _Studio for Architecture and Scenography 