SPIRAL ROPE | Archiring Studio

A closed space with an open shape:

The goal of our design is to create a mystic structure insisting on the dichotomies of open/closed, secular/spiritual and underlining the religious character of the sukkah. The response is a free and irregular spiral, a twisting shape. Infinite. The spiral, that continuous shape, puts in relation the exterior «profane» space and the interior «sacred» space. Anteriority entangles with posteriority. A metaphor of present life and the afterlife.

Discontinuity through continuity:

Traditionally in the Jewish religion, a sukkah is made to accommodate several activities. The spiral creates different intimacies that can hold several activities like eating, reading or praying. The sukkah is not apprehended as a single space only able to accommodate one activity. Spaces are organized by function, from the most public to the most intimate. It is like a continuous flow leading from the outside of the sukkah to the central point. Penetrating the sukkah becomes like borrowing an initiation path. Voluntarily, the walls get tighter at some places,forcing people to turn for pass.

Construction approach:

The constructive approach tends to insist on the idea of a spiral, and to be simple and easy to implement. For this we chose a wooden structure consisting of assembled columns and beams upon which a natural hemp rope is woven. It is gradually drawing the walls and roof, without interruption and with the same rope. The weaving is done following horizontal and oblique lines. These irregularities create a set of full and empty and also of light and shadow, opacity and transparency. For the roof, the more we penetrate the sukkah, the more dense and thicker becomes the rope’s trajectory. At the center of the spiral, an opening is created and places the visitor in direct relation with the sky.