2010 Bat Yam Biennale Entry

In collaboration with Oded Ben Yehuda & Bosmat Sfadia Wolf

2009 Design Competition Entry

2010

In collaboration with Bosmat Sfadia Wolf

Ghana's unique context obligates architects and urban planners to rethink conventional housing models. For us, a question is posed:

Is it possible to improve the quality of life for the emerging middle class in Ghana while respecting and exploiting the potential of its cultural environment?

Our design proposal presets an "urban Cell-house" that is based on three conditions which we believe are appropriate for this challenge.

First, ‘Cell-House’ enhances the sense of freedom. The owners have both the ability to afford and built a house on their own. Given the fact that only local materials and natural resources are used, along with know-how constructions skills – this house is a practical alternative for an urban living model.

Secondly, ‘Cell-House’ offers a flexible organization of spaces. In order to maintain flows of light, air and movement, the structure's skin is constructed by fixed and partly opaque elements while the inner components are penetrable and highly exchangeable. Moreover, flexibility is achieved by having the possibility to expand the modular units/cells whenever required.

And finally, this proposal aims to promote sustainable architecture. It displays various ideas of ecological methods of design and how they can be implemented on urban environments.

2009

In collaboration with Hadas Itzkovitch

Interactive Art Installation Competition Entry

We believe that art and design can play a great roll in transforming the public realm into a different space. It can function as stimuli for the senses, as demarcation for specific places and as an agent for social and individual change.

The entrance to a museum is a very specific public space, has a special character and can be used as such for many different purposes. It can be seen as a piazza where people meet one another, as well as a resting place, or a contemplating area before and after visiting the museum.

Since the Piazza is open to all people from different backgrounds we would like to propose an installation in which one will be able to undergo an experience on many levels, regardless of age group or nationality. Our aim is to create a space that will be instinctively experienced through the senses, rather than through the mind. To create a space in which the complicated ideas of art, compositions and shapes become suggestive and accessible to all.

Our fascination goes out to the field of tension between movement and non-movement, the inner and the outer, sound and silence, opaqueness and transparency, the individual and the group, the private and the public spaces.

In our collaborative work we investigate the relations between, architecture, visual arts and movement, trying to observe the language in which these disciplines meet while developing ways to confront the visitors with a new experience.

Description:

The work proposed is a spatial installation in the form of a transparent cycloid fountain, made of glass and adjusted organically to its surroundings. The visitors can view the installation from the outside and also become a part of it when entering the space.

The glass is wrapped with water: the fountain’s transparent floor is built on water, water pour from the ceiling on the outer orbicular walls and in between it’s double layered glass, while creating different patterns in a play of light and movement.

Inside the space one can hear an audio installation, a composition made of water’s sounds, pre- recorded and adjusted harmonically to the natural sound of water in the space.

The visitors as if enter a cocoon made of glass and water, like an artificial womb, or a human size aquarium in which meditative sound and natural water flow give a timeless feeling, like a moment standing still in time.

Different streams and different nozzles will manipulate the water and its frequency .The geometry of the fountain is comprises of different gradients, these too will help manipulating the water flows and patterns.

The space within the fountain can be closed at night, or after visiting hours for security reasons…nevertheless by passers can still enjoy it then from the outside.

Optional/ additional elements

In addition to the sound and live streams of water, some abstracted images of water patterns can appear and disappear being projected onto the glass walls in a playful interaction with the existing patterns. The projectors can be installed as a part of the construction invisible to one’s eyes.

At nighttime a light installation can give a new dimension to work, the fountain can be lit by soft colors that will alternately change.

2008

In collaboration with Rachely Rotem & Marlin Nowbakht

Design Competition Entry

2012

Design Competition Entry

In collaboration with Bosmat Sfadia Wolf

2008

2012

Competition Entry

In collaboration with Tula Amir & Tal Zakut

The new National Library gathers around a large central space that contains the bookshelves. The hundreds of thousands of books stored in five bookshelf walls, towering to a height of six floors, are an element in itself, viewable from the main passages of the building. The book container can be viewed through three facades: the one facing Rupin Street, the other facing the government offices and the third facing the inner courtyard. This space is the focal point of the project. This is a transparent container, a reflection of the inherent knowledge located inside the building. The visual experience is gradual – the exterior is semi-transparent, the inside is completely transparent.

The library's main activity occurs in the central space - the user who enters the main space, will be directed to the desired floor andshelf, or will wander through the galleries in which the shelves are located, and will be able to sit in one of the cubes, the ones opened into the central space, or the closed ones allowing a quiet environment for reading and studying.

Finding your way in the various spaces of the library is simple, and there is always a reference direction and clear orientation. The building's clusters are divided by floors. The shops, cafes and restaurant serving both visitors and users will be located near the Kaplan Street entrance. From this floor one can climb the ramp leading to the roof terrace open to the landscape, and watch through the windows on the cluster of reception, sorting and preservation of books.

On the roof we offer an open library, built out of two walls of books that would allow private donations of books to be disposed of, and free for the public to acquire. One can go on the roof, and put or take used books from the shelves. The roof can also be used as a literary crowd's hangout even when the library is closed, and accessible to the audience.

The facade facing the Knesset building is three-stories above road. Other floors are below road level and turn toward a wide dug out yard. All building facades consist of Mashrabiya constructed from two types of broad-shaped pipes made from casted grounded local stone and mortar. The façade's pipe arrangement is a quote from the first lines of Genesis, the Book of Books, and the spiritual foundation of the place. These verses have undergone a process of encoding that dictate the layout of the Mashrabiya. Still the facades allow open view of important sites and the surrounding landscape. Furthermore it also allows long hours of natural light while protected from direct sunlight.

Special attention has been given to environmental issues. The building utilizes a minimal area. The roof garden serves the library staff and its visitors, the roof above the library's process area is also green, and thus the principle of preserving the green area lost by the construction of the new building, is kept. By opening East-West windows as well as through the North-South main corridor, we keep the option to ventilate the building through direct fresh air. The rocks carved to allow the construction of the building will be ground and re-used to create the Mashrabiya, which prevents direct sunlight to reach the sensitive books. Moreover, plans allow for bicycle parking, recycling bins, 'gray' water treatment and rainwater harvesting.

The main façade of the book container, through which the reader observes the open landscape, is South- Western, thus it is protected by ventilated corridor between the inner glass and the outer Mashrabiya. The two upper floors of the library are glazed with solar panels generating the electricity required to run the library.

2013

Competition Entry

In collaboration with Tal Laub Richter