The Homeless House Project
The Homeless House Project by our friends at Rael San Fratello Architects is a project that aims to bring attention to the current state of homelessness in the United States. The realization of the project will be the creation of a structure clad with signs made by the homeless. Rael San Fratello is purchasing these signs from the homeless to contribute to the short-term needs of the individuals who made them. Upon completion, the structure will be exhibited in New York City during the month of September as part of Sukkah City.
About
The Homeless House project, a concept by Rael San Fratello Architects, brings attention to the contemporary state of homelessness within the United States. The outcome is a structure that is clad with signs made by the homeless and destitute. By purchasing homeless signs from the individuals who made them, we are contributing to the short term needs of someone living on the street. The structure will be exhibited in New York City during the month of September, 2010 as part of Sukkah City.
The Homeless House website is intended to document the process of obtaining signs and the amazing people and places encountered along the way. It will also contain news and information regarding the development of the project and the design.
Contributions
We are seeking assistance in collecting signs from throughout the United States and we need your help. If you have signs you would like to contribute, you may mail them to us directly at this address. Or, please contact us directly and we can give you details on how to collect signs and for shipping details. Typically we have purchased the signs for $2 and we are happy to reimburse for the signs and shipping.
Collecting signs can be a meaningful experience and will allow you to meet people you otherwise would never have the opportunity to and to see your city in a new way. Contact us if you need tips on how to start.
If you would like to contribute financially to the project you may also donate via paypal. All proceeds will go towards the aquisition of signs, construction of the design and ultimately towards an organization that helps those in need.
Contact
The Homeless House Project
c/o RAEL SAN FRATELLO ARCHITECTS
2200 ADELINE STREET
SUITE 360
OAKLAND, CA 94607
(510) 207-2960
studio@rael-sanfratello.com
Architects Newspaper on The Homeless Sukkah
The Architects Newspaper Blog
Sukkahs, Homeless Shelter Coming to Union Square
“Of the three entries we’ve actually seen, Rael San Fratello’s is probably the most interesting. Yet it is Sukkah of Signs that is most audacious in its scope and, we imagine, shape, as it tackles. Rael and San Fratello have gone about collecting signs from homeless people in the Bay Area and, with the help of volunteers, from across the country, in what they’re calling “The Homeless House Project.” Somehow, they’re going to repurpose these into a sukkah, a challenge we can’t wait to see in action. Best of all, as Foer points out, “It’s really great because they’re basically transferring their award money to the homeless population,” as each sign is gotten in exchange for a donation.”
Sukkah City NYC 2010
Rael San Fratello Architects has been selected as one of twelve from over 600 entrants to participate in the Sukkah City competition. Our concept, The Homeless House, will use signs collected from the homeless to clad the entire structure. Just as the sukkah commemorates shelter provided during the forty desert-wandering years of Exodus, the design for our sukkah brings attention to the contemporary state of homelessness and wandering and will serve as a vehicle to raise awareness of homelessness in the United States.
Because of the great effort needed to obtain enough signs, we are asking for your help. If you are interested in exploring your city, meeting people in need and offering a donation for their sign, please let us know.
Among the jurors for Sukkah City were Thom Mayne, Ron Arad, Geoff Manaugh, Adam Yarinsky, Ada Tolla and several other notable scholars, designers, architects, thinkers and writers. Sukkah City is organized by Reboot and the Union Square Partnership.
Rael San Fratello’s Work
Rael San Fratello Architects, established in 2002 by partners Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, is an internationally recognized award-winning firm whose focus on emerging technologies and ecological design lies at the intersection of architecture, art, culture, and the environment. As practitioners and academics, we seek to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of ecological thinking through design and are committed to innovation through research, analysis and artistry. We utilize the most sophisticated technologies available, from rapid prototyping, computer-aided manufacturing and 3D modeling, analysis and visualization to help our clients realize their visions.
Ronald Rael
Ronald Rael, B.Envd; University of Colorado, M.Arch; Columbia University
Ronald Rael is an architect, author, and Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley he was the co-director of Clemson University’s Charles E. Daniel Center for Building Research and Urban Studies in Genova, Italy, and coordinator of Clemson’s Core Digital Foundation Architecture Studios. He has been a member of the Design Faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, and a Senior Instructor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his Master of Architecture degree at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he was the recipient of the William Kinne Memorial Fellowship.
Rael’s research examines the convergence of digital, industrial, and non-industrial approaches to making architecture. He was the recipient of a Graham Foundation Grant for “Constructed Topographies: Earth Architecture in the Landscape of Modernity”; winner of the Architectural League of New York’s Deborah Norden Competition for “Wadi Hadramut: Cities of Earth”; and is author of Earth Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), which examines the contemporary history of the oldest and most widely used building material on the planet—dirt. His website, EarthArchitecture.org was ranked by MoPo 2009: Worlds Most Popular Weblogs on Architecture as among the top 20 blogs on architecture worldwide.
Virginia San Fratello
Virginia San Fratello, NCAARB, B.Envd; North Carolina State University, M.Arch; Columbia University
Virginia San Fratello is a licensed, practicing architect with over 10 years of professional and academic experience. Prior to joining the faculty at California College of the Arts she was the co-director of Clemson University’s Charles E. Daniel Center for Building Research and Urban Studies in Genova, Italy. She has been a member of the Design Faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles and a Visiting Professor at the University of Arizona.
San Fratello’s research revolves around the convergence of digital, ecological, and building component design in architecture. She was the recipient of Metropolis Magazine’s Next Generation Design Award for her Hydro Wall concept and with Ronald Rael currently has a collection of recently designed masonry units which hold vegetation on display in New York. She is working with manufacturer / distributors to launch these innovative and sustainable architectural building components into the market place.
Sukkah City
12 radically temporary structures will be built in Union Square Park in New York City.
Join us Sunday, September 19th and Monday, September 20th from dawn until dusk.
The sukkah will be reimagined and renewed.
Biblical in origin, the sukkah is an ephemeral, elemental shelter, erected for one week each fall, in which it is customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice.
Ostensibly the sukkah’s religious function is to commemorate the temporary structures that the Israelites dwelled in during their exodus from Egypt, but it is also about universal ideas of transience and permanence as expressed in architecture. The sukkah is a means of ceremonially practicing homelessness, while at the same time remaining deeply rooted. It calls on us to acknowledge the changing of the seasons, to reconnect with an agricultural past, and to take a moment to dwell on–and dwell in–impermanence.
Historically, the sukkah’s permanent recurrence is not as a monument, archetype, or typology, but as a set of precise parameters. The basic constraints seem simple: the structure must be temporary, have at least two and a half walls, be big enough to contain a table, and have a roof made of shade-providing organic materials through which one can see the stars. Yet a deep dialogue of historical texts intricately refines and interprets these constraints–arguing, for example, for a 27 x 27 x 38-inch minimum volume; for a maximum height of 30 feet; for walls that cannot sway more than one handbreadth; for a mineral and botanical menagerie of construction materials; and even, in one famous instance, whether it is kosher to adaptively reuse a recently deceased elephant as a wall. (It is.) The paradoxical effect of these constraints is to produce a building that is at once new and old, timely and timeless, mobile and stable, open and enclosed, homey and uncanny, comfortable and critical.
‘Sukkah City: New York City’ will re-imagine this ancient phenomenon, develop new methods of material practice and parametric design, and propose radical possibilities for traditional design constraints in a contemporary urban site. Twelve finalists will be selected by a panel of celebrated architects, designers, and critics to be constructed in a visionary village in Union Square Park from September 19-20, 2010.
One structure will be chosen by New Yorkers to stand and delight throughout the week-long festival of Sukkot as the People’s Choice Sukkah of New York City. The process and results of the competition, along with construction documentation and critical essays, will be published in the forthcoming book “Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next Three Thousand Years.”
Selected entries will also be displayed in an exhibit at the Center for Architecture in New York City during September 2010.
Some of the rules
– A whale may be used to make a sukkah’s walls. Also a living elephant.
– The sukkah must enclose a minimum area of at least 7 x 7 square handbreadths.
– A sukkah may be built on top of a camel.
– If the sukkah has only 2 complete walls, and they face each other, a third wall of at least 4 handbreadths must be within 3 handbreadths of one of the complete walls.
– The roof cannot be made of bundles of straw or sticks that are tied together (although untied straw or sticks may be okay).
– The roof cannot be made of utensils, or anything conventionally functional when it is not part of a sukkah.
– There is no maximum area, except in NYC where any structure larger than 19 x 8 feet is not considered temporary by the DOB.
– The roof cannot be made of food.
– The sukkah must have at least 3 walls, but the third doesn’t need to be complete. The walls must remain unshaken by a steady wind.
– At night, one must be able to see the stars from within the sukkah, through the roof.
– The sukkah must have a roof made of schach: the leaves and/or branches of a tree or plant.
– If there are only 2 complete walls, and they form a corner, a third wall of at least 1 handbreadth must be within 3 handbreadths of one of the complete walls.
– A sukkah may be built on a boat.
– A sukkah may be built on a wagon.
– A sukkah may be built in a tree, like a treehouse. But it cannot be built under a tree, or any overhanging surface.
– In day, the roof must provide more shade than sunshine. Its individual construction elements must be less than 4 handbreadths in width.
– The sukkah must draw the eye up to its roof, and to the sky beyond.
– The roof must be made from something that once grew in the ground, and is no longer attached to the earth.
– The sukkah must be at least 10 handbreadths tall, but no taller than 20 cubits.
– The base of the walls must be within 3 handbreadths of the ground, but need not reach the roof.
The sukkah exists as an ancient archetype in Jewish tradition, recalling the homeless exodus through the desert and festival of harvest and homecoming: a place to eat, sleep, study, think, feel, and be.
The sukkah exists as a parametric network of design constraints and possibilities; of musts and mays and maybes.
Who’s behind it
Joshua Foer is a journalist who has written for National Geographic, Esquire, the New York Times, Slate, and other publications. He is the founder of the Atlas Obscura, an online compendium of the world’s curiosities. His first book, Moonwalking with Einstein, about the art and science of memory, will be published by Penguin Press this winter.
Roger Bennett is the co-founder of Reboot.
Reboot is a fast-growing network of thought-leaders and tastemakers who work toward a common goal: to “reboot” the culture, rituals, and traditions we’ve inherited and make them vital and resonant in our own lives. The network has created an array of books, films, music, organizations and digital projects that encourage others to think about who they are, what they are inheriting and what it means to them.
We are indebted to Jennifer Falk and the Union Square Partnership for their support; to Dani Passow for his rabbinic input; and to Thomas de Monchaux for his many insights, renderings, and devotion to this project.
Inquiries should be addressed to sukkahcity@gmail.com
Sukkah City 2010 Winners
Twelve Winning Designs Will Be Displayed in Union Square Park
NEW YORK, NY (August 19, 2010) — Sukkah City,
http://www.sukkahcity.com, an ambitious global architectural contest that engaged the design, creative and architectural worlds to radically reinvent the ancient sukkah, today announced the twelve winners of the competition that will be on display in Union Square Park, ahead of the week-long festival of Sukkot. The selected designs will be built by their designers at the Gowanus Studio Space in Brooklyn and then driven by truck to Union Square for public display on Sunday, September 19 and Monday, September 20.
More than 600 entrants had to wrap their minds around the arcane rules of Halakah, Jewish Law — which allows a sukkah to be built in a tree, on a wagon, or out of a living elephant. Entries came from 43 countries, including China, India, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Turkey, and Bosnia & Herzegovina.
“We asked some of the most creative people in the world to re-imagine and renew the sukkah, and the results are truly dazzling and inspiring,” said Roger Bennett and Joshua Foer of the cultural organization Reboot, which organized the competition in collaboration with the American Institute of Architects, Architizer, Dwell, the Union Square Partnership, and the City’s Department of Parks & Recreation. “This humble structure will come to life in twelve new forms that are bold, beautiful and quintessentially New York.
Elliott's Blog 