New House Pictures from Ra'anana

Here's a house I just finished with my partner Shari Mendes, AIA. The contractor was Judah Richman of Cornerstone. We had a great day shooting the house with Photographer Uzi Porat, courtesy of Marvin Windows. A big thanks to the clients for their cooperation, both on the shoot and throughout the construction of the house.

View all the pictures of the house.

18 Years Later

One of the few places in Tel Aviv with the strange ambiance of a Hollywood back lot, this neoclassical assemblage at 7-9 Mazeh Street was the focus of an urban public action in 1992 by the nascent Amutat Lev Tel Aviv.

18 years later, following a painstaking and creative exterior renovation by Architect Orly Shram, the building remains empty and its magical courtyard, shown here, is unused and desolate.

The original building by Architect Joseph Berlin was built as an unusually grandiose apartment building in the early days of Tel Aviv. It was adjacent to the rear entrance of Tel Aviv's Rokach hospital, referenced in a local curse, "May you go in on Balfour Street (the hospital's reception area), and go out on Mazeh Street (the morgue pickup)". This unfortunate location may have contributed to the continuing deterioration of the building as a residential property, and when the hospital parcel was bought for residential redevelopment in the early 1990's, the building was crumbling and practically uninhabited.

Amutat Lev Tel Aviv, the neighborhood residents association, recognized the potential for the building to fill a need for public institutional space. In negotiations with the developer and the city planning commission, they succeeded in re-writing the proposed zoning plan to include acquisition and renovation of the structure as a public library, to be funded by the developer.

It is now 2010. The building, despite its expensive facelift, has not been inhabited since the re-zoning, and no public institutions have opened there. The spacious glass enclosed floors are empty, and the city seems intent on renting the spaces to the highest bidder, hoping that its promises are faded and forgotten.

This post in memory of Gad Gerzon, Attorney, Amutat Lev Tel Aviv's legal counsel from 1991 through 1996.

Rotary Square, Rehovot approved

Here's the latest incarnation of our project in Rehovot, now called Rotary Square. On May 24th it was approved at a meeting of the Rehovot planning council, and now moves on to approval at the regional planning board level. I am designing this with my partner Shimon Piltzer.

The plan incorporates 2 historic buildings, including the first store in town, that corner building with the red tile roof. The tower component has leveled out at 18 stories above retail, and we have retained the street wall components along Herzl Street with 5 stories above a retail floor and a shared entry courtyard behind the second renovated historic building.

Rebuilding Herzl Street

Well, the verdict is in on the landmark buildings on the Rehovot site. We presented our review of the architectural, social, and historical value of each of the four buildings on the site, and the preservation committee accepted three of our four recommendations. We recommended tearing down three of the buildings and preserving the northernmost building which was, by all accounts the first store in the young city. In its current state, its not much to look at (right), but the new development planned for the four lots will generate enough profit to restore it, either as a functioning store, or as an exhibit dedicated to the early history of Rehovot.

We recommended demolition of the remaining three buildings on the site, having failed to find either historical or architectural distinction that merited preservation. The committee disagreed, however and decided to preserve a second building, this one dating from the 1930's.

Perhaps it was because of this dramatic photograph (left) that we submitted as part of our official report. This is definitely the structure's "good side" and after a short discussion, it was decided to give this building the benefit of the doubt.

Now the decisions are official, and our design of the development around, beneath, and possibly above these landmarks can begin.

Lets hope they clean up well.

The Divided Apartment Problem - Some Attention from Above

In February, I wrote about the damage that subdivided apartments do to the urban fabric. I advocate directing the tax authorities to deal with the phenomenon, taking the task away from overburdened municipalities wielding the week reed of the Planning and Building Statute. In this article (subscription needed), Globes describes similar steps taken by the income tax authorities. While the emphasis seems to be on unreported rent being collected on legal apartments, this could, with proper direction, begin to solve the wider problems that cause peripheral neighborhoods to deteriorate.

What Are We Wasting Today?

In competitive spheres, sometimes the best way to get an edge is by wasting profligate amounts of a resource. This behavior, once reserved for the life-or-death struggle of war, is now fully domesticated in the business world. And does it affect our cities and their planning? Hold on to your hats, we've got examples.

First the warfare model:

The Strategic Defense Initiative. This vast boondoggle was conceived near the end of the Cold War, and is considered by some to be the move that ended it. As outlined to the public and to the Russians, the United States set out to outspend the USSR in developing technology that would build a protective shield around the country. What are we wasting? Money! Can we waste more, and faster than the Russians? Yes! Will the other side bankrupt themselves or expose deeper weaknesses trying to keep up? Well, you could say it worked.

This example is just the most recent and familiar of this strategy in war. Other examples include Iranian junior suicide troops in the Iran-Iraq war, reserve industrial capacity in WWII, and so on back to battles in which reserves of animal power are decisive. The key factor becomes the ability to waste, and the clearly signaled intention to waste more and more.

In business, this strategy is used at the top end of the scale of corporate volume, to grab or maintain dominance in a market. Was Netscape a problem for Microsoft in the late 1990's? Microsoft had plenty of programmer hours to waste, and forced the margin cost of a browser down past zero where it remains to this day. Google today maintains much of its competitive advantage by outspending all comers on servers, RAM, processing power, and bandwidth, effectively closing off all but the largest competitors.

What are the parallels in city planning? Part 2 of "What Are We Wasting Today" will try to answer

Preserving Herzl Street

Can urban renewal work? For Americans of the late twentieth century, there are few words more discredited than "urban renewal". This phrase, once innocent and hopeful, was battered to death by years of generously funded, well-intentioned government programs. The mistakes and unfortunate guesses inherent in the plan were discovered and made public only after years of implementation, first by the clarion voice of Jane Jacobs, and eventually by wide consensus. It is safe to say that many years will pass before planners in the U.S. will again dare to present plans that raze city blocks and streets in order to replace them with evenly spaced residential towers.

Strangely, this unfortunate history did not stop Israel's Housing Ministry from naming their flagship urban densification program "Urban Renewal" or in Hebrew, התחדשות עירונית.

Championed for the past 10 years by planner Sophia Aldor of the Ministry, this program seeks to renew built areas in Israel's cities by radically increasing the density of residential units on specific sites. For each apartment vacated by the current owners or tenants, 3 to 6 expanded units will be built, this time with parking, elevators, and obligatory safe rooms. When the towers are in place, the original tenants will be invited back in, and the remaining apartments will provide profit for the builders.

This process - evacuating tenants and rebuilding - gives these projects their more popular name "Pinuy-Binuy" or "Empty and Build". Seen in a larger context, these projects preserve the open green spaces beyond cities, by adding value to the "grey" space within the city and making it possible for developers to add more housing without breaking new ground.

Our office is now working on an urban renewal project in the center of Rehovot, on the corner of Binyamin and Herzl. This project is funded by the Ministry of Housing and administered by the City of Rehovot, and their engineering department. Our goal is to create useful and beautiful urban space within the confines of a technically oriented program of densification. We have the strong advantage of proximity to open spaces at the heart of the city, and the mandate to integrate some of the nearby cultural institutions of the city.

On the other hand, the prevailing design approach of the Rehovot engineering department is decidedly non-urban. A plan for isolated tower blocks would sail through the bureaucracy smoothly, while we struggle to define street walls, hierarchies, and urban spaces.

I'll be documenting our progress here as we continue to design.