Spontaneous Architecture: SABA 2012

Showing posts with label SABA 2012. Show all posts

11/22/2012

Good morning Rajpur / Esther Zandberg, Haaretz, November 22, 2012

http://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/architecture/environment/1.1870644

11/08/2012

"Israeli Gandhigiri* in the land of Bapu**" - SABA 2012 presentation at Bezalel

Presentation of SABA 2012 Rajpur projects will take place on Friday november 16th, 11:00 AM, at the Architecture department of Bezalel Academy, Historic Bezalel Campus, 1 Bezalel street, Jerusalem.

* Gandhigiri - Those who walk in Gandhi's path (Gujarati).

** Bapu - Grandfather (Gujarati), one of M.K. Gandhi's nicknames.

10/30/2012

Apple Tree Mandir

This Mandir symbolizes the tight connection between the society to which I belong and the Apple tree.

As far as our collective memory goes the apple tree was always a key element in our society, providing us with a reliable source of income and enables the existence of our homes and families.

This tight relation between us and the apple tree gave me the inspiration for this Mandir.

The Mandir consists of an apple tree rooted to the village soil of which his trunk is wrapped by two masses sculpted from local clay earth.

The lower mass is in form of a cube that lies on the ground wrapping the tree's trunk and merges into it. The cube symbolize a house that has a strong connection to the ground and a long tradition of cultural and economic relation with the tree.

The upper mass that merges into the tree, symbolize the society that dwells in the house. A society that nurtures and cares back for the tree in order to maintain the relation and keep the system going.

המנדיר שלי מבטא את הקשר ההדוק בין החברה ממנה אני בא לבין עץ התפוח.

מזה שנים רבות מהווה התפוח מקור פרנסה ומאפשר את בניית בתינו וקיום משפחותינו.

קשר זה בין עץ התפוח לחברה ממנה אני בא נתן לי את ההשראה למנדיר.

המנדיר הינו עץ תפוח השתול באדמת הכפר שלי - מג'דל שמס, כאשר גזעו תחום ע"י שני גושים שמפוסלים מאדמה חרסית מקומית.

החלק התחתון הוא קובייה היושבת על האדמה וחובקת את הגזע, ומתמזגת איתו.

הקובייה מסמלת בית שיש לו קשר חזק לאדמה ומסורת ארוכה של יחסים תרבותיים וכלכליים עם העץ.

החלק העליון שמתמזג עם העץ מסמל את החברה החיה בבית (הקובייה) שדואגת לעץ ומפתחת אותו על מנת ליצור המשכיות ולאפשר את קיומה של המערכת הזו.

10/28/2012

Dérive - Searching for Silence

For most of us, the experience of a heavily populated and busy Indian urban area is no small challenge. To simply explore the city, or just to get somewhere, requires an amount of energy and patience that we aren't accustomed to in our Western lifestyle. While walking the streets, our sensory system is under constant attack - from the noise and the crowds, from challenging sights, and from strong odors that pervade every part of the city. It seems as we are all leaves, drifting at the will of the wind on a unplanned trajectory, attempting to calculate our steps through traffic, waste, and water obstacles. The city constantly invades our personal space; even if it seems that you have managed to escape momentarily as your thoughts sail to faraway places of peace and tranquility, the small, fragile hands of a child grasp at you and pull you back to the ground, to the difficult visages that prevail here.

The Dérive track

Jama Masjid

The Jama Masjid mosque compound is located in the heart of the old city, surrounded by a wall separating the inner compound from the hustle and bustle of the market outside. The high walls damper the city noise and creates a visual barrier, as well as preventing motor traffic.

Ahmed Shah Cemetery

A narrow alley leads from the market to the cemetery The end of the alleyway opens to an inner courtyard filled with graves, and the area is shaded by a large canopy of trees. The cemetery is entirely separated from the city, the sounds of the market are barely audible, and there are no vendors or motor traffic. Nevertheless, the space is not welcoming and is not inviting for a lengthy stay.

IP Mission Church

The IP Mission Church is located at a very busy intersection, and is surrounded by high-traffic multi-lane roads. The grounds house the priests' residences and the church itself, separated from the city by a high brick wall. The inner courtyard has a calm, peaceful atmosphere, as opposed to what exists beyond the church compound's walls.

Victoria Garden

Just across the road from the IP Mission lies the Victoria Gardens. Compared to the Church, the Gardens do not have any physical separation from the city's traffic, but its size and thick vegetation act as a natural filter, allowing for a quiet and pleasant outdoor space.

Ahmedabad Rooftop Restaurant

So far we have seen many types of peaceful spaces in Ahmedabad. In examining them we found that every place has some kind of physical filter or barrier that separates it from the action of this heavily populated city. In the case of the Ahmedabad Rooftop Restaurant, height is the barrier that separates the space and provides it with its quiet and calm atmosphere.

cover photo: SABA 2013, Spring in Hiriya: Guy Ehrlich, Michelle Hites, Shamir Zalkin / Humanesting

In spring 2013 SABA arrived at Park Ariel Sharon in Hiriya. Initiated by Dr. Martin Weyl and planned by Latz+Partner, this project strives to rehabilitate the garbage mountain that has been sprawling in this place since the end of the Independence War, to develop 8000 Dunums of open areas, fields, streams and ponds and to re-use them for various cultural, natural and leisure activities. During the semester, the students studied the park and its environmental challenges; they had to plan and to build 4 structures that cast shadows of 25 sqm each. The budget was fixed to zero. The structures will stand in the park from June 24th for 10 days.

Toward a non-violent architecture: Summer 2014 in India

‪In summer 2014, between September 11th and October 23rd, Spontaneous Architecture returned to India for an International studio held in collaboration with CARE school of Architecture in Trichy.

‪The program combined a 3-week intensive traveling seminar in 3 very different Indian Cities (New Delhi, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad) with a 3-week spontaneous architecture workshop at the KVK research agricultural farm in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.‬

‪During this workshop, Israeli and Indian students worked together and designed and built 6 small structures that would serve for farmers' markets and exhibitions.‬

Black Water, Grey Water: Spring 2014 at OCCUPYTLV Tent City

In summer 2011 Tel Aviv experienced a huge wave of protest, mainly due to the housing prices. The protest occupied the city's center during all the summer, From July 14th, when young Dafni Leaf spontaneously erected a tent in Rothschild Boulevard to the September 3rd "One Million Demonstration" in Kikar Hanedina [State Piazza). Soon later, most of the protesters packed their tents and went back to their too expensive homes, leaving behind only those who insisted to stay and many others, who did not have anywhere else to go.

On November 27th 2012, in accordance to an agreement originally made between the activist Tamir Hajaj and the Tel Aviv Municipality, the remains of the summer 2011 Tel Aviv protest Tent City were removed from Rothschild Boulevard and exiled to the Volovelsky-Karney park. Situated in the Tel Aviv's north eastern margins, the park was a green island surrounded by one of Israel's heaviest traffic, Tel Aviv's Central railway Station, Namir Road, Petach Tikva Road, Ayalon Freeway (hence its most common name, "Tsomet Parachat Drahim" - Crossroads Junction). The location was chosen because it was one of the only parks in Tel Aviv with public toilettes.

In 2013, a large portion of the park, about a third, was fenced to become the construction site of the "Loop", a new, gigantic infrastructural project which is to add a new connection to the Ayalon freeway and maybe one day would become a new station of Tel Aviv's mysterious Metropolitan train system. Tent-dwellers residing in the fenced area where asked to move to the unfenced area. The public toilettes was demolished; chemical toilettes offered and maintained by a private subcontractor of the project 's contractor were placed instead.

Today, OCCUPYTLV Tent City oscillates between a protest sit-in, a homeless shelter and a favela, and is occupied by few dozens of individuals . Each one of the occupiers has his own reasons to be there, they all protest either by protesting or by their mere survival in this place. However, apart sharing the shrinking space and infrastructures, the only thing they have in common is that none of them wishes to form a community with the others, and they do not form any organized community.

During spring 2014 SABA worked at OCCUPYTLV Tent City.

Summer 2013, Mitzpe Ramon

Located almost in the middle of route 40 from Beer-Sheva to Eilat and situated on the edge of the Ramon Makhtesh - the world's largest makhtesh (erosion cirque in the form of crater), Mitzpe Ramon was first settled in 1951 for a brief period of time by the asphalt workers of the route.

Few years later, in 1956, it was founded as a cooperative settlement for the mineral mining workers. A year later the cooperative was dismantled and the state took over: the small settlement soon became a tiny "development town" designed according the state planning apparatus of the late fifties, stacking new immigrants from Morocco in public housing projects.

In the following decades few more populations moved in:

During the Eighties, with IDF's redeployment in the Negev after the retreat from Sinai, Mitzpe Ramon absorbed a new population of Military professionals' families; in the Nineties new immigrants from former USSR; from the end of the 20th century few religious communities as well as a massive wave of young population of professionals and artists attracted to the spectacular landscapes of the desert.

Mitzpe Ramon is toady a local Council surrounded by the Har Hanegev Regional Council. Mitzpe's population counts some 5000 inhabitants. In the last decade Mitzpe Ramon tries shifting from the industrial and mining uses originally planned to eco-tourism: The hangars industrial zone has been transformed into an arts and crafts quarter, the stone quarries have been closed down and are about to be restored, a new luxury hotel, "Bereshit", was built near the Makhtesh's cliffs.

SABA will be working in Mitzpe Ramon from August 25th 2013 to October 2nd.

Spring 2013: Spring in Hirya

During the semester, the students studied the park and its environmental challenges; they had to plan and to build 4 structures that cast shadows of 25 sqm each. The budget was fixed to zero. The structures will stand in the park from June 24th for 10 days.