Cohen Dan

++'The scheme'

First arriving to Eyn-Hud Looking at the gentleness and the humility in which the village hugs its hill slope gives one a moment to celebrate the beauty of collaboration between men and nature. There I felt that my work would have to deal in a delicate way with two major components - The awesome power of nature and the needs of men.

Thinking about the complicated situation in which the people of Ein-Hud sit on their 'isolated island' - A place that allowed them over the years to maintain eye-contact with their once to be homes and lands, makes it a narrative of gaze and reflection, that can metaphorically affect a solution to our lives in that narrowed striped land of Israel - A 'good' solution here should reflect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An answer could only grow from facing polar forces with reality, while stimulating innovation by way of care and respect to both sides. So, I started looking for it in that one ingredient that inhabits it all – the soil.

Exploring the landscape, topography raised a giant 'footprints' from New Eyn-Hud's hill. It briefly sketched a clear contour line, drawn from ancient knowledge that the ground bears for time to reveal. Putting that line on a 1947 IRF air-photo of Old Eyn-Hud finds a complete matching in size and most surprisingly – in shape. It was a good clue for it to be a possible sustainable line for the growing village in the coming years.

The initiative for drawing new sustainable lines came from trying to feel the raw surface with a sensual bare foot, responding to the immediate surroundings, feeling its generosity that could lead to a seamless connection between the village and nature. The footprint declares the hill top as a natural center of gravity, allowing new homes to gather around it spreading with familiar typical arrangement through natural routs to the south-east. A loop path originally circling the hill top will be cut to allow linear 'cul-de-sac' way, allowing smaller roads to connect it with the houses. Pedestrian paths cross that 'main-road' connecting the center to village homes.

The private buildings arranged in 8 volumes, as the number of families, offering a density of 2-4 homes for 'Dunam' (1000 sqm.). The 8 offered plot of lands, divide the land leaving the distribution of houses and final resolution of density to the wisdom of villagers. It creates a platform that allows different 'natural forces' to shape posting and density of houses. The fragmentation of plan permits a Time-related process, with-out hurting the delicate fabric of the village.
Apart from schematic arrangement, a substantial base for living will relay on three factors:
1. enhancing the contact between village and 'National Park' surrounding it;
2. Improved infrastructure for maintaining cultural and educational basis, and;
3. Developed Tourism 'industry'.
Those elements together will prospect the growth of internal resources.

A regional 'countryside-school', (maybe the one to be recently closed in near-by 'kibutz' Ma'agan-Michel) will be placed near the new mosque and will create a basis for exploring, maintaining and touring the 'Carmel National-park'. Public build: 4 grades school, library, youth house, restaurant, horse-farm, administration, sports facilities, and more, will be the source for educational and cultural progress. The 'community center' will be the main building and should host some of those the services. At the same time it will contain a 'leisure home' that aside private home 'guest-houses' will integrate villagers with out-side comers. Most infrastructure and facilities will be used by both tourists and residents.

The scheme regards the whole area as a park in which private houses are gathered as 'islands' around a longitudinal public space. Two 'green islands' will keep its natural cover. Another north-west 'green island' was once a terraces orchard - a 'Bustan' - and will be cultivated again and added to the village lands as so. New east west and north south pedestrian and cycle routs cross the site performing the main non-vehicle routs. The public activity is spread along the stretched center so that every 'island' has its own center like attraction - thus cutting distances from center to 'periphery'. Between the 'islands' (and penetrating into them) there is a continuous, flowing park-space that contrasts the density that will grow in time inside them.

The all together plan, in meaning and form, will be generated from inherent knowledge and landscape resources, rather then designed. The theme will gain its logic from the isolation its people knew, their ordinariness and humbleness. Nature, as an old 'theme model' for architecture, will be the language for generating the plan. But not alone - orders sensed in natural phenomena will meet and engage artificial and modern technology, playing the tensions between polarities.

The compensation for long year discrimination of Eyn-hod's people is not to be implemented by external forces, but will depend on resources of local human and nature basis. It should come out of permitting the position of being able to 'watch over' (in metaphor and literal form) the past that will never be forgotten, while constructing exclusive new meanings. The uniqueness of the village will be generated from the memory of the living, as it is projected on and from their new land. Understanding and acceptance (from all sides involved) is the attitude that will lead to those unique new qualities. It is to become a place for the living devoted to new dreams not sleeping the old.

++The house'

The public main structure – a community center to be called by me 'The house' - sits on an open traced 'air route' that crosses the hill and the house it-self , to propose a 'south-west' – 'north-east' vista. A new 'soil route' curved on the water line of equation connects the cemetery and new the mosque, and performs as a main spinal 'boulevard'. It meets the 'air route' under the house to make a village center. The modern looking elevation walls, uses the old village vernacular – as the doted windows take their morphology from the hill formation of village houses. The façade contour line is drawn from surface scares and hills outline. Its over-scaled stones - like 'footprints' sunk in concrete - are inspired from local hyssop doted rocks, and helps to enhance the outraged amusing approach of the house. The house friendly respects and allies itself with traditional houses by the use of local materials and figure quotations.

While strongly anchored to the ground, the house emergence both represents heaviness and lightness -Like a cyclamen flower rising from a rock, with the motion of a bird's wing in its flight. Contradictory to it's bearing, the massive stand alone façade walls negates the detached inner rectangular delicate 'container'. Carried into the air on simple steel frame, the building as a hole sends a smiling gaze to its surrounding – appearing to close and far viewer almost as a sculpture in natural landscape.

Obviously enhancing its solitude, it also embraces the village and its people offering multiple activities from sports to reading and relaxation, as well as a space for the celebration and contemplation of nature. Actually it applies the villagers and their guests a second home or 'leisure house'. Sitting on the hill's ridge, the building at a time separates and connects the village. As a borderless linear statement it gives dimension and direction, making nature comprehensible. Its fully openness to the surroundings offers varied observations on the landscape: the 'past gaze' - through the long elevations - a windowed curtain masked watch over the valley and over the once abandoned old village ,and; a 'future gaze' – through fully opened narrow elevations, directing a 90 degree turn over that symbols expectations, prospect, opportunity and hope.

The 'house' in New-Eyn-Hud is a human mark integrated in nature, anchored while evoking to 'take-off', enhanced by clear connection between record and wish. It is a symbolic proud gesture to the lives of the people of Eyn-Hud, proposing with a smile of forgiveness, acceptance and hope, a new panorama for a new future.

The proposal as a whole brings an extensive answer for the people of Eyn-Hud. It addresses their remembrance and mythical themes, as well as creates a physical solution – a situation where concrete human needs meet and coexists imaginary and hope. From big to smaller scale, it creates a substantial platform for community and individual. From the general to the specific, it gives way to emotional representation, and at the same time supports continuance of the simple living.