Sukkah as Vehicle for Solidarity, Cultural Memory, and Collective Liberation

The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival, based in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, convenes community organizations and architectural designers to create sukkahs—outdoor structures inspired by a Jewish architectural custom. The Festival celebrates how these usually temporary structures can be repurposed to build community in new contexts by initiating long-term creative collaborations. Over the last five years, the festival has grown into a gathering place where interfaith, multicultural, and multiracial communities come together to envision just futures. Sukkahs become both a shelter and a platform—an open invitation to envision what collective liberation can look like when neighbors build, create, and dream side by side. 

Joseph Altshuler is cofounder of Could Be Design, a Chicago-based architectural design practice, and Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches in the School of Architecture and the Department of Landscape Architecture. With a release set for a September 2026, Joseph’s new book, Supergraphic Landscapes: From Public Art to Urban Design, co-written with Nekita Thomas, reimagines how graphics in the built environment can transform public space into places of connection, care, and collective memory.

Refreshments will be provided.