When Calgary's Beth Tzedec Conservative Congregation gathered this week to mark the start of their Sukkot holiday celebrations, the moment held extra significance for five Master of Architecture students and their professor.
Under the leadership of EVDS Professor Jason Johnson, the team of first-year Master of Architecture students designed and built the "sukkah," a structure steeped in religious and historical symbolism.
Dedicated by the congregation in a ceremony Oct. 8, the student-built sukkah consists of three walls and a lightly-thatched roof, conveying the themes of life's fragility, homelessness, and an appreciation for the fall harvest.
Sukkot celebrates the Israelites' 40 years of wandering in the Sinai wilderness after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. The sukkah is reminiscent of the their temporary shelter in the desert. Sukkot began at sundown on Oct. 8 and ends at nightfall Oct. 15.
For eight days and seven nights during Sukkot, members of the Jewish faith traditionally eat and sleep in a sukkah. Two other traditions of the holiday are inviting guests, or ushpizin, and waving the four species: the etrog fruit, date palm, willow, and myrtle.
The design team of Caitlyn Bidochka, April Battenfelder, Thiago Bueno, Kailey O'Farrell, and Max Senini worked over the weekend to test their design and ensure it was ready in time for Wednesday's dedication ceremony. Their sukkah design creatively incorporated the history of the Exodus from Egypt, building representative forms into every consideration. Mount Sinai, for example, is represented as a three-sided shape integrated into the form with every triangle panel of the structure. The four species, representing the spine, heart, eye, and mouth, are represented in the integrity and entrance of the structure, as well as in decorative perforations representing those who left Egypt. The map of the Exodus route is incorporated as the base image mapped over the sukkah, its shape and co-ordinates carried throughout the form in parametric relationship.
"The way that we've organized these perforations is that the larger ones actually map that route," explains Max Senini. "So we were trying to look at this as a crumpled-up map that articulates that path that the Israelites took."
Design teammate Kailey O'Farrell echoes Senini's enthusiasm for incorporating information into their design, and adds, "The best part about this process was getting to learn about another culture."
This year's dedication ceremony marks EVDS's third year of involvement with the Beth Tzedec congregation. The ceremony was led by Rabbi Shaul Osadchey, and featured an explanation of the spiritual foundations of the Sukkot holiday, the Rabbi's blessing, and songs of celebration.
More photos from the event can be found on EVDS' Facebook page.