Israeli Pavilion proposal for the Venice Biennale, 2016
An initial sketch – intended for the Venice Architecture Biennale, but eventually not submitted – as part of an ongoing interest in Pilotis [read more below].
Le Corbusier's most persistent architectural element – Pilotis – which were one of the five points in his modern architecture prescription, were widely adopted in Israel, where entire neighborhoods were raised above street level, on columns, beginning in the early 1930's, mainly up to the 1980's.
The familiar Israeli open ground storey, in-between the columns, was for many of us an integral part of childhood and of growing up, providing as it did weather protected, often paved playing and meeting spaces for all seasons. Gradually, it also became an important part of urban community life when in many instances such vacant spaces were provisionally enclosed and inhabited by small commercial uses – grocery stores, laundries, barber shops etc. – compensating for their common lack in housing quarters realized under the prevailing modernist zoning conception.
Nowadays however, this once-ubiquitous, almost "natural" phenomena, is gradually being swept away from our local built environment, as more and more open ground storeys are being sealed, while new ones are just rarely introduced, erasing not only a physical presence, but also the cultural significance it entailed.
There are many reasons behind this mass extinction. Some have to do with the major drawback which these open, shared-ground areas admittedly always suffered from, namely the fact that they require special collective household attention and care, which many buildings fail to give them over time. This often results in unpleasant "no man's land" ground spaces, which tenants are only too happy to get rid of.
Among other forces that challenged pilotis right from the start, in Tel-Aviv as in other places, are security and defense considerations, varying from wartime requirements for bomb-safe entryways, to everyday control measures keeping out unwelcome passers-by.
But the key player in the dramatic transformation taking place right before our eyes has to do with... earthquakes. Unlike vertical loads, which pilotis are quite capable of dealing with, horizontal forces, as in earthquake "shaking" of buildings, are poorly answered by them. For this reason, one of the major constituents of a comprehensive anti-earthquake plan, widely implemented in Israel in the last decade, is the binding together of ground columns with reinforcing walls, usually entirely closing the open ground floor.
Our proposal for the 2016 Biennale outlined an initial analysis of this overlooked subject, along with potential directions of tangling it theoretically and visually, taking advantage of the fact that the Israeli Pavilion in Venice – a clearly Corbusian edifice, partially on piltois – is itself an excellent example of both the original phenomena and its transfigurations, having been sealed and reopened time and again during its 65 years of service.