NESHER YAD-LEBANIM BY SO ARCHITECTURE

Nesher Memorial was built on a basis of an historic preservation building that was used in the past as a guarding position.

The building is located on a hilltop surrounded by a large square and a children’s playground. Prior to the construction works, the building was neglected and was used in favour of the public only once a year – in the National Memorial Day, then it was open for a tour and impression of memorial pictures, as a part of the public ceremony for the memory of the fallen.

Nesher municipality asked SO Architecture office to expand the square surrounding the building so it will enable multiplayer events, and to redesign the building and add functions to it, so that it can serve the public throughout the year as a gathering space.

The main architectural idea was to add to the existing building an auditorium structure that could be used for different kinds of public activities such as lectures, film screenings, activities of youth groups, etc., along with preservation of the historical memory.

The auditorium reveals its insides geometry to the park and the city surrounding, by its inclined façade. This geometrical act has an additional meaning in creating a symbolic geometry that communicates with the memorial concept, and the function of the building as a monument.

A large window is located at the edge of the auditorium, facing north and thus brings a soft light into the auditorium and enables a breathtaking view at the landscape of Haifa bay. In a poetic allegory to reality, the window function as a bright ending to the inner space, and thus symbolizes the balance between the bereavement pain and the light and hope in the living world.

A box for each fallen, with its picture on it, is hanged on the wall of the memory area inside the building. Inside it, there is a room for storage of memorial personal belongings that the family and the municipality can put. In the space itself there is a place for seating and communion with the memory books and the memory of the fallen.

The centre of the memory space is lighted by long and narrow windows that were the shooting slits in the original guarding position, and by upper skylight windows from the original historic building. The memory space was designed in a modular manner, so that if necessary, it will be possible to add additional boxes without any difficulty.

The original building contours regarding to the addition, are marked and highlighted through aluminium bars that were sediment in mortar and emphasize the contours of the old building regarding to the new addition. The materials that we used in the building are simple.

The floor in the memory space is a concrete floor. The ceiling along the whole building is covered with oak planks, so that it creates a warm atmosphere. The auditorium area was also covered with wood, and sponge padded seats. An access to disabled was also arranged.

Location: Giv’at Nesher, Israel 
Architect: So Architecture 
Project Team: Shachar Lulav, Oded Rozenkier, Alejandro Fajnerman, Tomer Nahshon, Samer Hakim 
Area: 118 Sqm. 
Year: 2013 
Client: Nesher Municipality 
Photoes: Shai Epstein

DIGITAL CONSTRUCTIVE SHELL BY OFIR MENACHEM

“In recent years, a building technology has developed in Jerusalem that separates the buildings’ structure from the buildings’ shell.

The architectural and cultural significance lies in the modernist concept developed in the Bauhaus school in Germany in the 1930′s, which is based on five principles, including separation of the walls from the building frame to create a free standing shell.

For example, traditional constructive elements became a camouflage for the building frame rather than a part of the structural frame of the building.

From a cultural & Architectural standpoint, I want to examine the relationship between the building shell and the building frame in Jerusalem.

Develop a typological prototype housing model which will be based on the structural frame and which will include further material aspects.” Ofir Menachem, first prize winner.

This is the first competition CoARQ launched, on april 2010. Students from more than 25 countries submitted their work into two categories: collective housing and urban desugn. CoARQ received 154 projects and the Jury Members designated four priezes for each category.

THE BEZALEL ACADEMY OF ART AND DESIGN BY YBGSNA

Most public institutions in Jerusalem exist as gated compounds. This reality probably stems from the semi-desert/Mediterranean planning culture, which developed in a mostly, non-urban and rough landscape conditions, along with intense security considerations, prevalent in pre-modern and unfortunately in postmodern eras.

From this perspective, the chosen site for the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in the Russian Compound, calls for the creation of a compound within a compound. This situation, along with the proximity to the Municipal Court and several other public institutions, allows for the establishment of one of many “Heterotopias”, which beautifully blends with the diverse collage of the Jerusalem urban fabric. In this way, my proposal for the new Bezalel Campus is not based on a fabrication or interpretation of an urban scheme, but rather on a careful and unapologetic insertion of an independent institution into a vacant slot in a diverse environment of conflicting agendas.

It is designed as a gated “container” with various routes and public arenas that carefully connect in a controlled manner to the fabric of the environment. Due to zoning requirements, the “container” in this scheme is divided into two seemingly similar buildings. Substantial changes have been made only to the ground floors where program requirements of public facilities and urban context themes played a significant role.The envelope of the building is designed in stone, the traditional building material of Jerusalem.

It is designed as a feasible structure with the use of simple straightforward technology, in accordance with local modes of production. The envelope filters the intense Mediterranean sunlight and the “commercial views” of Jerusalem to allow for a contemporary, clean, “high-tech” progressive “core” of a working studio environment. All studios are designed as versatile modern laboratory spaces that can withstand rapid changes of operational technology and program definition. Alterations, subdivisions and conversions of the modular spaces are possible with marginal structural interventions.

 

Location: Jerusalem, Israel 
Architect:YBGSNA 
Area: 4,300 m2 
Client: Bezalel Academyof Art and Design

GINDI HOLDINGS SALES CENTER BY PITSOU KEDEM ARCHITECTS

A structure used by a real estate company as a sales office for residential project they are building. The project examines the line between architecture, marketing and consumption.

The program was to build, a sales office for a neighborhood planned for the future. The architect chose to relate to the project as a contemporary pavilion with him attempting to combine, within one building, modern, minimalistic, architectural principles and thereby create a building that is almost an object or a piece of sculpture almost akin to a small, architectural pavilion.

At the same time, the architect attempted to cope with consumer principles relevant to the period, the need to sell and the reasons for the structures construction – marketing, marketing, and marketing.

It is interesting to see the mutuality between pure architecture which, despite everything, manages through purity and constraint to serve the brand needs of a large real estate company which usually seeks ways to stand out, to be bigger and more grandiose.

The structure succeeds in bringing to the world of aggressive marketing used by real estate companies a structure which, despite its temporary nature (it will be demolished in a year's time), also brings with it qualities associated with permanence.

The structure arouses curiosity, draws attention whilst still maintaining its monochromatic restraint and quiet strength.

It uses reflecting pools to strengthen its look and to create illusions and reflections and combines central, internal courtyards with trees bursting out from two dimensional, white spaces which suggests the volume and the space inside the structure.

A geometric pattern of vertical wooden lines serves as a "skin" that divides the spaces or as a texture which is imprinted, using special techniques, on the outside.

The sun's rays, striking the wall, create a repeating, three dimensional illusion. The pavilion succeeds in fulfilling both of its functions – architectural and marketing.

The structure was designed and built in just three months. It was built entirely from a metal skeleton (lightweight construction), most of which was built in the factory and transported to the site for erection and finishing touches.

 

 

 

 

Location: Shoham, Israel

Architect:PitsouKedem Architects

Site Area:3400 m2

Floor Area:300 m2

Year: 2012