The building is located in Jerusalem at the edge of Mamilla, a mixed-use redevelopment designed by Moshe Safdie and completed in 2007. Its eastern façade dates back over a century and bears the insignia of the Ottoman Church on its central pediment. Originally, the ground floor was divided into small shops, each with a single arched opening.  Aside from the preserved eastern facade, the building’s new elevations were designed by Safdie’s office in a traditional style.  The property sits directly across the road from the Ottomon walls of the old city. Due to the hilly topography of the city, the home’s upper level offers wonderful views of the Hinom valley to the south. The owners also purchased an adjoining flat rooftop on the south side, which creates an expansive terrace at the living room level. An even better view is enjoyed from the roof terrace above the building.

Fitting the program into the building envelope was not the challenge of the project.  Upstairs, the program was sparse in proportion to the allotted space. A kitchen, three bedrooms, and living, and dining spaces were allocated five hundred square meters. Indeed, we had to adjust our mental sense of scale to design larger spaces than most urban homes could afford.  At the lower level, the walls between the old shops dictated the division of space. Entry foyer, parking, pool, gym, cinema, mechanical room, and library each occupy one shop. We battled with the structural engineers to allow openings for internal circulation between the shops, which they finally agreed to halfway through the construction.  This allowed us to significantly improve the lower level plan.

The home is entered from the north side via a long narrow library hall. This was actually a last minute design change. Our initial entrance design was from the historic eastern elevation with an intimate open air courtyard behind one of the arches.  During construction the clients realized that they needed more storage for their extensive book collection, so the front door was reconfigured to accommodate a two story library space within the entry hall. We saw this as an opportunity to introduce the exposed steel and wood vocabulary used throughout the house. The double height book-lined walls create a gridded backdrop for a sculptural circular stair, which anchors the space. Four arched openings light the space with soft northern light.    

The main stairwell and elevator were in place before the property was purchased. This led to a design dilemma. Whilst the vertical circulation was at the north end of the house, adjacency to the south facing terrace required that that the living spaces inhabit the southern end of the house. Thus, one needs to pass through the bedroom zone in order to reach the public spaces. We resolved this by carving a gracious arrival atrium into the private zone where the elevator lands on the upper level. A large sliding skylight transforms what would have been a dark elevator vestibule into a bright urban garden. The connection to the sky is reinforced with a tall textured stone wall, essentially a canvas for the sun to express its moods throughout the day. To break up the long corridor from the atrium to the bright living room, we introduced another sky-lit space halfway between the two spaces. This one is a more intimate reflection space. It also defines the entry to the guest bedrooms, which are somewhat concealed by a large floating partition for art. Another tool we used to reduce the monotony of the long corridor was a play of materials. The corridor wall is comprised of interlocking and overlapping planes of wood and plaster in a kind of Se-Stijl composition that unfolds as one walks from the atrium to the living room.

Beneath both corridor skylights we introduced large roughhewn boulders. We spent a number of days searching local quarries for the perfect stones. Once selected, we designed the walls around them.  A local stone sculptor shaped the edges of the boulders to integrate them into the stone wall compositions. One supports a wood bench; the other has a fountain trickling from its natural fissure.    

Our approach to the public space was to keep it as open as possible to avoid obstructing the wonderful views. The dining, living, and family rooms work together as a large square volume surrounded by windows.  The kitchen was treated as a floating object within the larger space. The breakfast room wall disappears at the press of a button.  In order to reconcile the contemporary interior with the large arched windows, we contrived a detail that clearly defines a break between the exterior wall and the interior. Rather than continuing the smooth white interior walls right into the window arches, we terminated the new walls a bit before the windows with a large shadow joint. This reveals an exterior wall of textured plaster that houses the arched windows. We also introduced LED lighting into the gap, which highlights the textured plaster of the arches.  

Once in the main living square, the primary focal point is the steel plate book-wall rising almost ten meters from the ground floor and reaching up to a glazed slot in the roof. This steel sculpture was laser cut and then assembled on site like a three dimensional puzzle. The exposed joints tell the story of its fabrication. Rather than painting, we had it treated with a clear lacquer to preserve the natural patina of the slightly oxidized steel. Wrapping the shelves are stairs of solid oak and steel. To keep the stairs aesthetically light, the stringers were stepped, and we finished the underside of the stair exactly as the top. This creates a gravity defying sensation when looking up from below.  Although not very large, this complex space is dear to us. The multiple levels, wrapping stairs, hard geometries, and dramatic lighting give it the energy of a Piranesi etching.

Leading from the living room to the terrace is a small stair of steel and wood. With this stair we sought a muted playfulness that would not dominate the room. A steel ribbon spills from the arched opening and shapes the wood into stairs.

A surprise in the dining room is the recessed pyramid shaped sink. It is made of red tadelakt, a traditional Moroccan plaster technique, which has a beautifully raw artisan finish. This material was also used in a number of the home’s bathrooms.

Back to the corridor, one enters the master bedroom suite via a wood screened door. The carpenter almost walked out on us when we showed him the sketch. The randomized wood screen is our interpretation of the vernacular mushrabya window screens used throughout the Middle East.  It was made of two grids of interwoven wood sandwiching translucent glass.  The door leads to a small vestibule with a curved wood wall leading to the bedroom, closets and bathrooms. In the husband’s bathroom and closet, he requested that we introduce some Moroccan design elements, hence the pointed arches and more colorful palate. The sink is a colossal affair, hewn from red slayeb limestone to match the curve of the wall. The wife’s closet and bathroom are more consistent with the rest of the house. In her closet, an exposed steel framework supports floating white millwork boxes. The steel geometry is carried into the glass wall of the bathroom. Inside the bathroom a single frosted glass window gives a celestial glow to the space accentuating the form of the vessel tub.  The concrete sink was cast on site and finished in dark tadelakt. The soft grey walls are a lighter shade of tadelakt to offset the glass mosaic surfaces.

The remaining bathrooms are poetic combinations of limited materials brought together with careful detailing. The upstairs powder room consists of tadelakt walls and a floating sink cut from local Halila stone. Reinforcing the horizontality of the sink is a single floating shelf of wengee wood.  Lighting the space is a deep asymmetrical cone-shaped skylight. The pool bathroom walls are clad with the same staggered gray stone used in the pool. A sink combines with a bench in a monolithic three block composition of local gray birzet stone. They are connected with deep mortise and tenon joints, an interpretation of a detail more often seen in carpentry fabrication. The wall behind the bench-sink is covered in teak wood strips, accentuating the weight of the stone. The cinema bathroom has the only non-local stone in the project, black basalt, to pick up on the cinema’s black and red theme. The basalt sink and wall tile provides a strong contrast to the deep red tadelakt walls.   

The pool was inspired by ancient baths found around Jerusalem. Mosaic tile and staggered stone meet with the water create a very tactile, almost sensual atmosphere. The pool room came with a hulking structural protrusion that hovered awkwardly over half the pool. There was no way to eliminate it, so we celebrated it by turning it into a mysterious grotto-like space, the back wall of which is a gushing fountain. The tall mosaic columns are stretched to infinity by the reflective ceiling. A single deep round window offers a view to the old city walls through Ottoman iron work. Soft top lighting accentuates the wall textures and heightens the room’s drama.  

In addition to the pool, there are three other water features in the property. The sky-lit atrium has a stream of water bubbling from a boulder and trickling into a long narrow pool of riverbed stone. Out on the terrace is a large tiered fountain surrounded by stairs. This fountain was solution to a problem rather than a program requirement. Below the terrace is a shopping center. Its elevator protrudes through the roof, creating an unsightly non-parallel box. We designed the round fountain to hide this eyesore. It is built of three concentric mosaic rings. The large inner pool houses the fountain and overflows into an intermediate collecting trough. Outside of that trough is a planter ring designed to cascade flowers down the stairs. Integrated into the stairs of the fountain is an outdoor kitchen for entertaining.  On the upper roof is a six person Jacuzzi built into a large stone platform. This is the highest point of the project and was designed to make the most of the panoramic view. The pool walls and bench are a soft blend of blue glass mosaic. The floor is a burst of color, handmade by a local artisan.

A defining feature of this project was close collaboration with tradesmen. Sending a drawing to a contractor far from guarantees that its design intent be carried out. Even a great design is quickly lost at the hand of a careless contractor.  As Jack Welch once said, “one needs to wallow in it”. He was probably referring to the infinite nuances that could never be communicated in a brief, specification, or technical drawing. We spend a lot of time meeting with tradesmen in their workshops and on site to explain, experiment, and solve problems. This also gives us an intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of individuals, machinery, and materials. This knowledge is invaluable to a designer’s work. We continually build on past experiences, so that our collective work is, in some respects, a single large project under continual development.  

Aside from the minimal program, our clients were uniquely hands-off for most of the design process.  After selecting a layout option from the three we had presented, they were hardly involved in the development of the design until the end of construction. In some ways this worried us, as we do not like surprising clients. But, as any practicing architect knows, an overbearing client can quickly choke the creative process. In this case it was the opposite. When the client wanted to change something they always presented the problem and asked us to find the solution. This approach allowed us to think outside of the box for a solution that also spoke to the larger architectural story.

The story of this home is one of modern spaces in an ancient context. It is about the dialogue between the old and the new, sometimes subtle, sometimes bold. It is also a story of sunlight treated as a malleable material to be modulated and sculpted. And finally, in its realization, this house is a story of passionate local craftsmen shaping indigenous materials into modern architecture.