AtelierNUL15

The Israeli spatial politics is on bad terms with the modest desire of living. It is just an expression of the desire to survive at any cost. This results in behaviour doing harm to others and on the longer term to them selves. One can compare it with an always returning boomerang of which its destructive power is persistently and heavily denied.

Only to create a masterplan for Ein Hud would mean trying to throw the boomerang to the Israeli spatial planning authority. Identity and meaningful public domain are not achieved by reacting to injustice. For the community of Ein Hud there is a real chance, after being legalised, reach out a hand to the entity out of which it is derived, Ein Hod. This reinvented relationship can only be made by one way.
This is by means of creating a network containing visible new public domain. There is a need to make public domain that gives the community space to reflect and at the same time invites to relate to others and offers in this way a new feeling of their own identities. This has to be achieved without having to discuss boundaries too much. Because creating boundaries is one of the strongest ways to give identity to a group. But these boundaries always lead to conflicts in this highly explosive political impasse. An example is the wall (fence) that the Israeli build around and through Palestinian areas and polarizes the strained relation.

The design of the related public spaces

Our design can be explained by the following three summarizing aspects, which played an important role in our minds during our design process.
1. Pointing out that both villages should gain from the design proposal otherwise one of both parties will be dissatisfied and feel “discriminated”.
2. Secondly we only use the planning of buildings to create public domain. We believe that planning by proposing new boundaries, as asked in the proposal, is only leading to more argues about less important issues such as land ownership.
3. And thirdly this proposal has to be read as a means to think in another way about this kind of problems, when discussing about boundaries is the case. Instead of making the boundary the issue. Certain relatively precise interventions, concentrating on common public spaces, push the discussion to another spatial level, and show us that the political conflicts are less important than they seem

The principles semi enclosed space

The conflicts in between Israel and the Palestinians are roughly said about claiming space; the claiming of a place is the heart of the conflict. We don’t want to play this game!

Instead of this we try to make a plan including the asked program which emphasises the importance of a sustainable network of public spaces. The spatial instrument of the semi enclosed space forms the base of our interventions. The principle of the semi-enclosed space is based on a very commonly used principle in architecture. From the old theatre in Delphi which used the round form to create a place, a podium, at the same time uses the image of the wide background view of the landscape as decorum.

On the one hand the semi enclosure makes a sense of a place, which belongs to the built up area around; on the other hand it opens up, which confronts the visitor with the surroundings. It is just this mechanism which gives us a tool to implement two necessary assets for living peaceful close to each other.

1. A protected semi enclosed public space; total enclosure would tend to private space, in which we are not interested in this case. This semi enclosedness offers a feeling of protection in this very exposing landscape especially necessary in this case where both sides (Palestinian and Jewish) feel threatened by another.
2. The same semi-enclosed space can be seen as a semi opened space. Instead of emphasizing the introvert character it emphasises the extrovert character of the space, forcing the confrontation with the surroundings.

To create a sustainable network of public spaces, we designed a number of architectural entities, with special concentration on the semi enclosed space. Starting with a visual network of public spaces that connect both villages. These spaces are orientated at each other and form a physical network without being physically connected by more than a road, which for a big part is already present.

The villages of this area have an organic urban growth. Only the Israeli planning politics force settlements to grow as planned. From our point of view it is not the built up area that should be planned, but we should try to make sustainable public spaces. We use the architectonic object as a way to create a sustainable and dualistic public space. The network of related public spaces forms the backbone for possible organic urban growth in between. It is the importance of the public space that allows us to make architectonic ensembles instead of a conventional master plan. Making this landscape design, by architectonic objects with included public space the intervention seems les political than a masterplan, which gives tools to force a certain development.
Without planning al the building mass we believe we have created enough grip to be able to predict the future growth. Our plan is in this way more strategic than precise, while on the scale of the public spaces we try to give a strong backbone for organic growth
By a more or less detailed description of what architectonical and landscaping instruments should be used to create this network of related public spaces, the basis of our plan is formed. In this way we placed eight architectonic objects in the landscape. Al connected by a network of related public spaces. It is this public relation, formed by semienclosedness of a both public and collective space that is present in the following eight objects in superimposed on the landscape.

- civic center
- home for the elderly
- school
- hammam
- tourism
- dwelling
- sports facilities
- shopping center

By the reasonably precise proposals for the architectonic objects we think we can predict two kinds of organic growth. Planning the program in these areas is something which might be replaced by organic growth that could take place in two ways partly facilitated by our intervention.

1. The possibility of extension or building connected to the architectonic ensembles on the not representative outside of the building mass.
2. Growth along the new road that connects the ensembles.

The new civic center

The asked design for the new civic centre for Ein Hod gives us as designers the possibility to explain and make visible our design tools we used to create all the public spaces. Instead of just concentrating on the real form and the program of the built up part of the architectural entity we emphasize the way the public space created by the semi enclosure is manipulated to influence the way it is experienced. There are multiple levels of experience in relation to its public space. There is a gradation of introvert orientation on one end of the spectrum and very extrovert orientation on the other hand.
The program, orientated in the project, is also public and orientated to the public space. The outside is for the single hallway at the top floor which forms the internal routing, besides the entrances on the side of the public space. The lower part of the outside wall is closed and gives possibilities to build against or to extend the program if needed.

From spatial politics planning, to social planning

We see it as a real idea competition and we question the very tight rational way the design question is explained. One of the most important aspects of our proposal is the fact that we do not limit our proposal to the area of Ein Hud, but we look at a bigger scale. We step out of the contest between Ein Hud and Ein Hod, by pointing out an important common value: the quality of public space. We do not think that drawing an alternative border for Ein Hud would be the best solution to come to a more acceptable place to live. The different villages have to rethink their relationship to the context: the character of the landscape and the urban areas.

The proposal is created as a model with a possibility for a broad social basis giving opportunities to both involved parties, two enemies with extremely conflicting political meanings that have their origin in two religions claiming the same land as their rightful possession.

The design might be a blueprint for many cases. By pointing out the importance of the design instruments used, we think we have found a way to make a proposal without provocation. The new border of Ein Hud as mentioned in the competition information is replaced by a more basic set of tools which could be used in more comparable cases. With the plan we propose we try to show a convincing image to prove our theory of designing for a public goal that is the same for both sides in the conflict. And we hope that spatial politics will make place for social spatial opportunities.