About
The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival brings together neighbors, community organizations, designers, artists, students, and faith leaders to co-create sukkahs—structures inspired by Jewish tradition—reimagined as places of belonging, solidarity, and hope.
Rooted in North Lawndale’s shared Black and Jewish history and the neighborhood’s legacy of resilience, the festival fosters interfaith, multicultural, and multiracial collaborative futures.
Together, we build third spaces where diverse communities gather, create, and envision just futures—spaces that affirm our shared humanity and interconnectedness in a time of global division and struggle. Each co-created sukkah becomes an open invitation to generative, place-based work that strengthens solidarity and plants the seeds of systemic change.
North Lawndale holds a unique place in Chicago’s story, with a shared Black and Jewish history deeply intertwined with the civil rights movement. Once a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, it later became a center of Black life and activism, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Chicago Freedom Movement fought for fair housing and racial justice. These layered histories are not just about buildings and streets, but about people—immigrant and migrant communities who carried their faith, culture, and struggle into the fabric of the city.
The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival celebrates and breathes new life into this legacy of “beloved community” by transforming history into a living practice of collective liberation. Over the last four 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.
Throughout the Festival, the landscape of sukkahs comes alive with public programming that calls us into action: to listen and remain curious across differences, to honor our shared humanity, and to build a city and world where no one is free until all of us are free. One sukkah at a time, we are co-creating third spaces that make collective liberation not just an ideal, but a practice rooted in community, imagination, and care.
The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival is co-hosted by:
Vision
We envision a city where temporary acts of gathering spark lasting bonds of solidarity, creativity, and care. The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival seeks to model how interfaith and intercultural collaboration can transform contested histories into shared futures. By anchoring the sukkahs in ongoing neighborhood use—as a pop-up theater, bicycle kiosk, DJ booth, healing station, and more—we aspire to cultivate living monuments to resilience: ‘third spaces’ that celebrate our collective humanity, and offer sanctuary for reflection, dialogue, and action toward a more just and compassionate world.
Press
2025
Festival Organizers
Artistic Director
Could Be Design is a Chicago-based design practice directed by Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison that creates seriously playful spaces that initiate participation, companionship, and solidarity among multiple communities. Joseph and Zack provide curatorial leadership for the Festival, architectural design support for the contributing sukkah design teams, and landscape visioning for the festival grounds at James Stone Freedom Square.
Community Design Director and Development Director
Architecture For Public Benefit (APB) is a mission-driven practice dedicated to making good design accessible to everyone. Guided by a collaborative process, APB partners with nonprofits and community organizations to create environments that reflect the needs and aspirations of the communities they serve. Their commitment to impactful design has been recognized by the AIA Chicago’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards and the AIA Chicago Foundation’s Roberta Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Award. APB’s Chana Haouzi supports the co-design workshops that are integral to the participatory sukkah development process.
Venue Director
Lawndale Pop-Up Spot (LPUS) is a community museum in a shipping container, co-founded by Chelsea Ridley and Jonathan Kelley. LPUS is a space for exhibits featuring art, history, social issues, and more, by and for the community of North Lawndale. LPUS’s goal is to help reimagine how museums serve communities, while contributing to ongoing revitalization efforts by the North Lawndale neighborhood. LPUS coordinates the Festival’s on-site activities, and helps initiate, cultivate, and steward the community partnerships that are integral to the Festival’s mission.
Partnerships & Public Program Co-Directors
Open Architecture Chicago (OACChicago) addresses issues of social justice, racial equity, shared resources, and equitable neighborhood development. They work with communities to shift narratives and create pluralistic futures, co-creating with practitioners from the arenas of arts and culture, architecture, planning, social impact design, community activism, and systems change to shape processes and plans and create spaces for inclusive, diverse stakeholders. Craig Stevenson is an arts & culture producer, educator, and visual & spatial designer who continues his social advocacy as the Co-Chair of Open Architecture Chicago.
Shafaq Choudry s a strategic and innovative leader in urban planning and policy with 15 years of cross-sector experience in community development, systems change, and inclusive program design. She cultivates collaboration across government, community, and private partners to co-create solutions in community resilience, sustainable transportation, and equitable development. Rooted in a multicultural, interfaith upbringing and guided by a systems design approach, she brings both vision and pragmatism to building partnerships that foster belonging and shared values. With a deep commitment to inclusion and bridge-building, Shafaq integrates policy, design, and storytelling to empower organizations and leaders, advancing joyful, resilient, and equitable futures across diverse communities.
Craig and Shafaq help build and steward the community partnerships at the core of the Festival’s mission, while curating and coordinating the Festival’s public programming series.
Landscape & Exhibition Design
Could Be Design
Nekita Thomas
Festival Lot Steward
Stone Temple Baptist Church
Pastor Reshorna Fitzpatrick
Annamaria Leon
Outreach Assistant
Phil Kaplan
Fiscal Agent
Design Museum of Chicago
Rabbinic Advisory
Benj Altshuler
Natalie Shribman
Graphic Identity
Matthew Harlan
Web Design
Studio Itzi
Fabrication Partner
Stolatis Fabrication
2025
Thank You to our Sponsors!
Sukkah Sustainers
Driehaus Foundation
Crown Family Philanthropies
The Jules and Gwen Knapp Charitable Foundation
Sukkah Partner
Sukkah Builder
Innovation 80
Sukkah Boosters
Phil Kaplan & Marcia Bogolub
Jewish Community Relations Council
Sukkah Raiser
Jeff & Deb Zaluda
Sukkah Helper
Ken & Paula Weissman
Friends
Susie Sigel
Eli Kaplan & Jamie Albrecht
Edwin Hanlon
Michael Frankenstein & Mary Pat Slowey
Amy Little
Bill & Anne Goldstein
Jill Olswanger
Lance Friedmann & Sari Gluckin
Program Partners
Chicago Architecture Center - Open House Chicago
Chicago History Museum
Chicago Humanities Festival
Get Involved!
Support local community members and and be part of a fun celebration of art, culture, and tradition by supporting the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival!
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Volunteer opportunities are currently not available.
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We’re not accepting individual donations at this time. If you would like to become a festival sponsor, please contact us.