Seamless Boundary

Investigating and incorporating formal investigations are necessary so to resolve issues other than architectural ones. ‘Invisible’ or ‘unrecognizable’ factors or realities are what dictate how we investigate a space’s program and how it is formed, therefore form-finding tactics of such as creating and interpolating a digital and architectural ‘knot’ is derived from these ‘invisible’ forces that drive the project. The Middle East, and in particular Israel, is replete with social, political and religious issues and conflicts. To design within such a volatile environment is a daunting task, but not unapproachable. In order to design for the future, to plan for evolutions and events yet to occur, memory becomes a factor. De-memorialization of past events, ideologies and dwelling is a crucial factor in this design, so as to allow for urban and personal growth and enhancement of the living condition.
But this is not to say the proposed change in Ein Hud’s master plan is not sensitive to the past and the area’s culture. Rather, what our concept entails is a reinterpretation of a typical village. A village should not be identified as a isolated moment in the landscape or, but rather part of a network to the greater surrounding whole. Ein Hud and Ein Hud in their current conditions are situated and developed in such a manner that there is no dynamic space between the two that blurs the boundary of one village with the other. There is no shared shape, and therefore no shared heritage or sense of community. What this proposal addresses is the need for outward growth that would blur what is Ein Hud and what is Ein Hud, who is a neighbor and who is a stranger. The concept of a knot is appropriate to this site and our concept for resolving urban issues because it not only dictates a formal quality but also a social one. What occurs spatially inside a knot, if it is perceived as volumetric, is a sequence of folding spaces, these spaces both do and don’t occupy the same space. In plan folded spaces, derived from a process of knotting, can occupy the same space, yet in section they are differentiated. This brings up and interesting social condition of privacy, and community. A folded space can allow on to dwell with in it and feel both a sense of privacy, ownership, but also a sense of publicity and community. This hybrid social/spatial condition is what can help reconnect isolated, yet close-by communities and allow them to grow and create a greater sense of synergy. It is these ideas of the social and special condition that designated how the built form would evolve. Forms were investigated digitally and created through processes abstracted from folding and knotting methods. The resulting condition is two fold. One, there is a series of buildings paired with one another sharing space in plane, yet occupying different sectional conditions; this is done formally from a gentle manner to a more extreme condition which exists in the community center. The second aspect of the design is the fence, walkway that runs through the site and creating gestures of the building footprints extruding out past the envelope, through out the site and into other spaces and building; these are a field of ‘strands’ distorted in the tension between the two villages and allow for pockets of space to form.
Our initial concepts consisted of connecting the towns of Ein Hud and Ein Hod in a central location. This location would be the culmination of a series of developments that spanned outward to Ein Hud and Ein Hod. Like threads spread out over the landscape, the sequence of building, road and hybrid space would being to converge, overlap and form spaces as it descending the hills of the two towns and converged to form a common, shared space.