Energet(h)ics

CONCEPT

What is a city in the ethnic and religious conflict settlements? This is the question, I believe. The answer could be to think of the coexistence of two cities, in some way antithetic, destined in time to melt together. The city of the intimities about which Alexander Langer in the quoted passage speaks (more than of the identities, slippery and impervious land, true occasion of contrast and conflict), made of private introvert places, where the own religious creeds are cultivated, that protect, where we find ourselves and our own identity is elaborated in a progressive way (in this way they are ghettos, in the positive meaning of ghetto, sustained by Francesco La Cecla...). This counts both for the Palestinian that for the Israelis, separated in their own house (that ground belongs both to the ones that to the others, even if it is for various reasons), not by walls, but from the present need to preserve and to revolver security, the only condition for a dialogue and cohabitation. There is then the city of the exchange and the cohabitation, bound to the transits, to the movements, to the commerce (perhaps the only real tradition of integration, often the vendor is a wayfarer, that comes from far away, like the merchandise that he brings with himself). It is necessary to think more in the detail, to of that what these two cities are made of, in order then to try to design and to plan them. In this specific case there is then a third potential city, the city of culture and art (the artists of Ein Hud?) to which find a strategic, visionary, utopian role, once present.

The concept is then to think how could a territory made of "ethnic islands" work, bound to the being and to the everyday life, bound together by "paths of the possible cohabitation", where the exchange is possible, through the traditional functions of commerce, of work, and where it is possible to use public services (schools, health, free time, culture) offered by a lay authority, equidistant from the ethnic characterizations and the legitimate religious creeds. It is along these paths, that it is perhaps possible to experience and to practice new forms of cohabitation. The slow steps in between open places that dialogue, become metaphor of a road that is not only physical, but above all to acquaintance and mutual understanding. Where it is opportune "To walk, not to run", for the road to cohabitation is long and laborious, but it is also the only one we can cover.
TERRITORIAL VISION

The territory of Ein Hud - Ein Hod must be ment as an element of transition between the coastal areas, prevailing in agricultural use, along the infrastructural axis Haifa - Tel Aviv, and the inner areas of the Mount Carmel National Park. This condition imposes cure and attention towards the actions of the improvement of the infrastructural relations that must not appear lesive to the environmental and landscape values. Particular cure also must be given to the reconfiguration of the present settlements, respecting the visuals of the landscape that the realization of the new planned road - of access to the settlement of Ein Hod, and to the Park - determines. No indulgence must be shown for those localizations that alter in a substantial and harmful way the natural conditions of valued lands. For these we must search for alternatives, de-localizing in more suitable sites incongruous buildings due to their dimension and position.

STRUCTURAL INDICATIONS

One first indication of the plan is to define a new structural order to the area included between the Road #4, the nucleus of Ein Hod, the kibbuz and the new spontaneous village of Ein Hud. The principal axises of such structure are: the new road that, mostly using an existing layout, realizes a new access to the Mount Carmel National Park and gives service to the recovered nucleus of Ein Hud; a second local road that organizes the space between the Palestinian nucleus and the kibbuz; a bicycle and pedestrian course that infrastructure the new planned green ways, along the stream that slides between the villages.
The territorial Master Plan furthermore recognizes the existing villages (ethnic islands, in the Vision), as single defined territorial units, insediative exceptions inside a territory of elevated environmental protection.
Lastly it proposes the realization of Urban Integrated Units (paths of the cohabitation) ment like areas of concentration of services, facilities, collective utilities, on horseback between the three infrastructural systems individuated. The planned definition of such Units is remitted to a successive level of projectual deepening. For the moment, the Master Plan lists in abstract terms the number of possible functions settled along such courses: collective equipments, commerce, work and formation, sport and loisir, alternative energetic sources. Every distance has however as a common rule and as characteristic invariant that one to find origin from the center of the existing villages (ethnic islands).

ACTIONS OF THE PLAN

Inside the existing nucleus of Ein Hud (Palestinian village), we propose the following actions:
1. the realization of a new practicable road, that in part it follows and it rationalizes the existing layout;
2. a new city axis, inside the inhabited place, that connects - in prosecution of the "path" already defined by the Master Plan - the places of major identity (cemetary, mosque, existing school, parking-lot, new collective center);
3. the demolition of some constructions with a high landscape impact, and their de-localization in areas of new development;
4. the strengthening of new facilities and services;
5. the realization of new sustainable dwellings, integrated to spaces of agricultural production for aid to consumption (city gardens);
6. the realization of a new system of access to the park, culminating in the polyfunctional Center that integrates functions of services to the settlement with those typical of tourism and receptivity.

DWELLING UNITS

The plan introduces six integrated residential units, composed singularly of a block of 6 building units, combined in formation inside a common fence, that contains common collective spaces and units of local service. Such system gives lodging to approximately 120 new residents. To every residential unit corresponds also an area of shared agricultural activities, that offers the occasion for an agricultural activity of subsistence and bound to the free time (city gardens) or for small handcraft activities carried out on a cooperative base. The constructive principle – houses built inside a fence - has been adopted also in relation to think of a possible realization of the single building units in self-promotion or self-construction, in ways deferred in time, compatibly with the economic possibilities and the familiar needs of the settled groups.
The residential units are also dwellings planned according to rules of environmental supportability, with particular attention to the gathering and the treatment of waters, to the energetic saving and to the use of alternative resources (solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, micro aeolic), also paying attention to the particular energetic abilities of the site.
THE PROPOSED MODEL OF A NEW STATE OF THE ROADS AND THE NEW CITY AXIS

The plan transforms the outline of existing practicability, substantially confirmed by the governmental Master Plan, introducing an attentive hierarchy between the several kinds of mobility: pedestrian and cartway.
One new access road connects the center of Ein Hud to the road that climbs up the hills towards Nazareth. From here begins a new structure of small service roads, that following the orography of the site, gives an approached to the single existing dwellings and those planned. Such choice, more suitable to the design of the site, makes possibile a pedestrian way out of the present axis that connects the area of the cemetary with the mosque and the great parking-lot of entrance, that becomes therefore the new urban axis of the village. Such course finds its natural conclusion inside the first hill that dominates the present settlement, elevated to a public park, thanks also to a regression of the border line of the military area. It moreover comes to a reduction already contemplated from the environmental address plan, that already proposes a widening of the existing settlement towards west. From the top of the small hill descends a pedestrian course that gives entrance to the Poly-functional Center, thought also as a door to the Park.

THE POLY-FUNCTIONAL CENTER AS A DOOR TO THE PARK

Such structure accomplishes at the same time various functions:

it is a territorial garrison; the structure is placed beyond the present military border, that becomes withdrawn some tens of meters. It carries out infact the function of door of the park, also in terms of control and service of access to the grid of the naturalistic courses that draws origin from such door;

it is a social service. The system is placed on the line of maximum slope of the terrain with the aim to join together in a pedestrian way various heights of the settlement. This consents to approach from the inhabited nucleus a series of spaces equiped placed inside of the park;

it produces energy. The structure in addition to being planned with bio-climatic criteria is supplied with fotovoltaic panels "stand-alone" lodged on the covering on which is found a series of bio-climatic fireplaces. The solution allows the building to be independent from an energetic point of view and through an aeolic generator to which it is connected to supply ulterior energy to the electrical network of the entire settlement.
The structure is realized in natural wood material employed as reticular girders or planking for the padding and "brise-soleil". The reticular assemblage allows to cover more greater lights of those currently adopted.
On the first level the entrance is placed and is served by a bench facing two rooms of small dimensions (25mq and 41mq approximately) poly-functional (didactic laboratories, meeting places, reunions, etc). From the same level one arrives to the hygienic services for the women and the disabled. The council-room is located on level -1, usable also for conferences, and an exhibition room with a double height for artistic events (that it finds its extension in the spaces equiped outside). On the same level there are located the hygienic services for men. Every covered space has its own extension in an open space, also in relationship to the particular climate that characterizes the site in which is placed the structure.