Spontaneous Architecture

11/23/2011

SABA in India - Summer 2011

On September 2011, SABA moved for a summer semester in India. The program was held in collaboration with the Architecture Faculty at CEPT University Ahmedabad and the Chandigarh College of Architecture.

Faculty

The semester faculty was composed by a large team of teachers from Bezalel, CEPT and CCA, as well as by a team of retired local professionals (farmers, masons, carpenters, and weaver) who shared their experience with us (in order of appearance):

Sharon Rotbard, Elisheva Levy, Neelkanth Chhaya, Akbar Nazim Modan, Parth Shah, Sangeeta Bagga, Deepika Gandhi, Priyanka Singh, Yatin Pandyia, Ayub Sherasiya, Karshanbai, Sanjibai, and Gittabenn.

Travelling Workshop

The first part of the program was dedicated to a travelling workshop in Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and New Delhi, in which the studio investigated some of India’s architectures (modernist experiments, historical heritage, contemporary architecture, questioned its own practices and possibilities of travelling and movement (tourism, backpacking, architectural tourism, dérive), and researched and documented local sample s of spontaneous architectures and unofficial technologies in cities, slums and villages.

Halvad Workshop

In the second part of the semester SABA moved to the Center for Rural Knowledge near Halwad, a small town in Surendranagar district, Gujarat.

The Center for Rural Knowledge is located on the border of a semi-desert area, 15 km from the Little Ran of Kutch and 5km from Halwad, a small town (30,000 inhabitants) which serves mainly as a center and marketplace for the farmers in the area. It Is a non-profit organization that had been founded by the Indian Center for Environmental Education, in the framework of various aid and self-aid actions initiated in the region after the 2001 earthquake. Since 2007, the center moved to a small experimental farm with a small campus by the architect Neelkanth Chhaya, who designed few other CEE campuses in Gujarat.

The Center for Rural Knowledge, Halvad

The Center assures various types of activities: Aid for local farmers and study, research and development of new technologies of sustainable agriculture (soil improvement, irrigation, fertilization); economical education and empowering of women groups from the region, mainly through micro-banking and the promotion of home industries; various educative activities for the region’s children.

Children’s Corner
SABA was asked to locate a children’s corner within the farm’s compound, and to design and to build 4 open classrooms of 15 m2. Each classroom should have “one floor, one wall, one roof”, and further specification – general activities, library, rest place, computer stand – were added by the Center’s personnel.

The design and building process was done in 20 days, in the spirit of Gandhi’s Village Swaraj – self work, local materials, no machines. The students financed the materials and tools costs, about $300 per classroom.

Participants

Jonathan Alon, Tamar Alon, Itai Bechor, Ayelet Ben David, Inbal Helzer, Alon Itzkin, Yael Johnson, Rajendra Menaria, Keren Christina Mendjul, Aleksei Noskov, Matan Pisante, Mevaseret Recanati, Michal Rosenfeld, Fouad Salem, Ronen Sarudi, Tali Serebro, Tal Tomer, Oded Wieder

11/22/2011

גרופ הֶ - קבוצה מספר 2

הספריה:

מבנה בצורת L, בעל תוכנית סימטרית ופתוחה בהשפעת ה"דומינו" של לה קורבוזיה.
מסת קיר בדרום ומולו ספסל המשמש לישיבה מפנים המבנה כמו גם מחוצה לו.

הקיר, העשוי אבן מקומית מסותתת, מכיל נישות המשמשות כמדפי ספרים העשויים פריקסט בטון מזוין. הקיר המסיבי נבנה מדרום למבנה על מנת להצל על המבנה ולאפשר כניסת אור צפוני הנעים לקריאה. עמודי המבנה וקורותיו עשויות סנאדות אקליפטוס, כך שכל החומרים שנבחרו לבניית הפרוייקט הינם חומרים מקומיים וזולים.

The Library
A "L" shaped structure, with an open and symmetrical program, influenced by the "Domino" of Le Corbusier.
A massive wall in the south, and in front of it there's a bench used for sitting from the inner space as well as from the outer space of the stracture.
The wall, made of local and chiseled stones, includes reinforced concrete precast niches, that are used as shelves for books.
The massive wall was built in the south aspect of the structure in order to shade the inner space and to enable the penetration of soft northern light which is comfortable for reading.
The structure's pillars and beams are made of Eucalyptus wood. All the selected materials for this project were cheap and local materials.

11/21/2011

מבנה מספר 4 | Pavilion No.4

עקרונות חומריים

מבנה עמיד לאורך שנים שדורש מינימום תחזוקה.

בכל התלבטות על חומר, נבחר בזול ובזמין ביותר (משיקולי הורדת עלויות ותחזוקה עתידית).

החומר המקומי לא יגביל לשימוש המקומי המקובל באותו חומר.

:Material principles

.Resistant structure, requiring minimal maintenance

In any hesitation or Thoughts about the material for the structure

we will selected the most cheap and available material ,for reasons of reducing future maintenance costs

Local material will not by restrict for the local Common use of the mateiral

החומרים

עמודי בטון פריקסט, לבנים אדומות, פלחי מתכת

Materials

concrete pillars, red brick, metal segment

עקרונות עיצוביים:

מעטפת דקה ככל שניתן לטובת חלל שימושי גדול ורב תכליתי ככל שניתן.

:Design principles

.shell thin as possible for a large multipurpose space as possible

דרגות של הפרדה:

אטימת קיר מזרחי לשימוש לוח/מחשב,סגירה חלקית של קיר צפוני כלפי הכיתה השכנה,קיר מערבי פתוח כלפי הגינה.

:Degrees of separation

East wall sealed for Table / computer, North wall partially closing Because of the classroom next door, West wall is open to the garden

עקרונות פרטים:

אתגר דיוק הדרוש בפרטים, ביחס למרחב הטעות המקומי והאנושי,

ייפתר על ידי הכנסת חלקים טרומיים וחיבור סופי באתר.

:Details principles

The accuracy of the the details is a challenge ,compared to the local and human error, resolved by inserting prefabricated parts and final connection on the site

כיתת לימוד ))(( Class Room

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.