Monument Square

A building practice, as opposed to a master plan, offers the possibility for the Arab Israeli inhabitants of Ein Hud to self-determine their built environment in relation to their natural environment. The proposed practices also account for local practices already in use, specifically the widespread construction of terraces for agriculture or retainage, the role of the olive grove in Arab culture, and currently dominant building materials--stone, masonry, and stucco. These practices also arise in opposition to Israeli planning practices which reinforce in inward looking nationalism predicated on policies of security, defense, and control. The proposed building practices afford the opportunity for sustainable community proliferation across cultural boundaries.

The topography between Ein Hud and Ein Hod, located on adjacent hilltop, enunciates a deep separation, a valley, between the two urban settlements, reinforcing and intensifying their differences. Future expansion of Ein Hud and Ein Hod must look to diffuse such contextually reinforced opposition. By examining topographic commonality between the two settlements one can prescribe an oblique expansion of both areas that gradually result in an area of co-inhabitance. This area is defined as the Northeast section of Ein Hud, which would obliquely navigate the valley between the two communities. Such co-inhabitance is a crucial parameter in sustaining the economic viability of Ein Hud and Ein Hod.

By combining the terrace-farming precedent of Arab settlements, which makes use of steeply sloped territory, and Jewish agriculture settlement that already mixes the individual housing unit with orthogonal agricultural plots to maximize land use, a potentially new planning practice arises. The non-site-specific Jewish model will be adapted to a site specific approach adapted to the vicissitudes of the local landscape. Occupying the slope reconfigures the relationship of surface and depth by including the horizontal dimension: above/below the earth becomes inside/outside the earth. This inside/outside relationship simplifies excavation and allows for the consideration of terrestrially integrated housing that improves sustainability in relation to environment.

Two distinct but complementary practices arise:

1) The integration of residential and community construction with olive cultivation. The terrace generating retaining wall emerges as the structural foundation of building. Depth is horizontal; the building enters the earth laterally.

2) The adaptation of the conventional masonry construction practice, which tends to build upward from a shallow depth, into a practice better integrated with the topography by stressing both horizontal/lateral depth and vertical depth.

The integration of these practices results in a community of possibilities. The built landscape merges with the natural landscape. The ground plane becomes inextricable from the floor or roof plane. Multi-use corridors emerge from the tactical, localized application of these practices. The very notion of a planning “practice” implies an evolutionary process responding to the similarly evolving community needs, rather than a “master plan” imposed from outside and above. Thus the rendered image, the plan, and section are not a proposed configuration, but exist, rather, as possibilities as we see them.