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Tel Aviv-based Bar Orian Architects has unveiled a new residential project that blends past and present by integrating two contemporary buildings with a historic, early 20th-century villa. The development, titled Villa Rothschild, sits along Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard. The original... View full entry
Fresh off its recent Peabody Award win, London-based Forensic Architecture (FA) has returned to one of its most popular research sites with a new project, called “Living Archaeology in Gaza,” examining the fate of an important archaeological site under assault in the Gaza Strip. The... View full entry
Israeli authorities have approved a plan to build a cable car to the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in the Jewish world, by 2021.
It’s the first phase of what proponents envision as a fleet of cable cars crisscrossing the locus of sacred sites known as the Holy Basin.
— The New York Times
NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman explains the controversial plan for a cable-car network, envisioned to connect significant Jewish religious sites in Jerusalem while bypassing Palestinian neighborhoods, and how the concept contributes to a "Disneyfication" of the Holy City as much as... View full entry
The Tel Aviv coastline is crowded with a mishmash of skyscrapers, Ottoman-inspired villas, and four-story cubes painted a sunlight-reflecting shade of white. But in a place where stylistic jumble is the standard, one strain stands out as the defining architectural aesthetic and a beloved household name: Bauhaus. — Artsy
Design fans may know to pin Tel Aviv as an architectural destination for its unlikely connection to the Bauhaus movement, which originated in Dessau, Germany, but few know why the style traveled over 2,000 miles during the 1930's. Krieger House | Courtesy the rothschild 71 hotel, Tel-AvivWhen... View full entry
President Donald Trump boasted earlier this year that the US would spend only $200,000 to $300,000 on a new US Embassy in Jerusalem, but it seems the project will cost nearly $20 million more than that estimate. [...]
The US spent just under $400,000 on modifications to the consular facility that allowed it to open as the US Embassy in May, but the State Department told CNN at the time that it planned "for construction of a new extension [...] as well as for additional security enhancements"
— CNN
Back in March, the 'Builder in Chief' promised that the highly controversial new United States Embassy in Jerusalem would have to be built "very quickly and very inexpensively" at a bargain price tag of around $250,000. According to documents made public this month, the State Department however... View full entry
This metallic box is the new $21m home for the AM Qattan Foundation, an arts centre that its founders hope will stand as a “beacon of culture” in the occupied West Bank.
“It has been years of fighting to achieve anything close to the standards we wanted. There are defects, but it is the best we could do while building under (Israeli) occupation,” [says achitect Juan Pedro Donaire, whose firm designed the new building]
— The Guardian
The Israeli Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale will explore the established mechanisms by which the country facilitates the co-existence of Holy places. As a location with special sacred status as the cradle of three Abrahamic religions, the region encompasses a variety of holy... View full entry
Plastic building blocks are once again reaching for the sky.
This time, it was the city of Tel Aviv that made an attempt to build the tallest Lego tower — or, officially, the tallest structure built with interlocking plastic bricks, not all of them made by the Danish toy giant.
[...] a joint effort between Tel Aviv City Hall and Young Engineers, an organization that promotes learning with toy bricks. The tower is intended to honor a child who died from cancer.
— The New York Times
"Omer Tower" was built in memory of Omer Sayag, himself an avid fan of the colorful plastic blocks, who lost his battle with cancer in 2014 at the age of 8. Clocking in at a height of 35.85 meters (117 feet and 7 inches), the structure on Tel Aviv's Rabin Square beat previous world records... View full entry
The train station is being planned for the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City. Katz said he decided to honor Trump in this way following the president's decision early this month to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to ultimately move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. — Haaretz
Yisrael Katz, Israel's transport minister, has said he plans to name a future train station in Jerusalem "Donald John Trump" Station, after the U.S. President controversially recognized the city as Israeli's capital earlier this month. The station is part of a contentious proposal to extend... View full entry
Tel Aviv has the largest concentration of buildings in the Bauhaus/International Style of any city in the world. With a collection of over 4,000 buildings covering almost one and a half square miles, the White City, as it is called, was largely created in the 1930s by a group of 200 German Jewish... View full entry
The Palestinian Museum opens its inaugural exhibition this weekend focusing on the holy city of Jerusalem, a city that both Israel and Palestine claim as their capital. The wide-ranging, overtly political show focuses on the realities of living in Jerusalem as well as the idea that despite being seen as the original global city, it also serves an example of how globalization has failed worldwide. — The Arts Newspaper
The Palestinian Museum, located in Birzeit, Palestine’s West Bank, opened last May. Back then, however, the $24 million structure designed by Heneghan Peng Architects had no exhibits to show due to a sudden resignation of the museum's former director. Its first show, Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al... View full entry
Eyal Weizman is a London-based Israeli architect and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work focuses on architecture as a form of political intervention and the discipline's role in modern urban warfare. For the past couple of years, Weizman's... View full entry
The one and only Phyllis Lambert continues to rake in architecture honors from around the globe. She received the American Academy's Brunner Memorial Prize this past April and was bestowed the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement during the 2014 Venice Biennale. Most recently, the former Canadian Centre for Architecture Director has been honored with the 2016 Wolf Prize in Israel. Past laureates include Eduardo Souto de Moura, David Chipperfield, and Peter Eisenman. — Bustler
More on Archinect:Phyllis Lambert recognized with 2016 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial PrizePhyllis Lambert named as 2014 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement recipientPhyllis Lambert steps down from Canadian Centre for Architecture View full entry
Besides the thing itself, architecture concerns itself with two kinds of sign about it: iconic signs and symbols. Iconic signs resemble the thing itself. They are the plans and elevations and isometrics. The more symbolic architecture is that of language, the word, the logo and so forth. The postmodern turn shifted the emphasis from the iconic to the symbolic.
I think [Eyal] Weizman has created an architecture about a whole other kind of sign – the index.
— Public Seminar
"Indexical signs are traces of events: where there is smoke there is fire. The smoke does not resemble the fire. It is not an icon. Nor does it have a code like a symbolic sign system. Forensics is a matter of working backwards from the index to the event of which it is the sign, like in a... View full entry
A new high-rise building called the Freedom Pyramid will change the face of Jerusalem’s downtown area. The project, conceived by architects Daniel Libeskind and Yigal Levi, will see a multi-purpose tower comprising commercial shopping and residential units atop the old Eden theater.
The idea for a high-rise at this location, adjacent to Mahaneh Yehuda market, first hit headlines in 2011. But a Jerusalem municipal committee only now approved the construction.
— israel21c.org
Correction: Studio Daniel Libeskind has informed us that the correct project title is "The Pyramid." The incorrect title "Freedom Pyramid" has been the result of an unauthorized press leak.Studio Daniel Libeskind also provided us with new renderings of the project as well as some more information... View full entry
