3Ka

EH MANIFESTO

1] Fifty-six years of exile two kilometers away from your own homeland experienced by hundreds of people. Exile in foreign and hostile lands, exile in prisons, exile that run over by days and seasons, until it becomes everyday reality, is the common condition of a population. slowly a new territory becomes place, where a collective memory grows and progressively fades the past, a population that meet a spatial significance again. we meet them in a line at the border of Jerusalem with their orange id, but are they citizens in reality? can they become actors of the cultural, social and economic development of Israel and all the Palestine? How to give an end to violence without erasing these dynamics of exclusion?

2] This masterplan explores the possibilities of a sustainable development, this meaning to reach identitarian qualities of internal active participation beyond an ideological affirmation of identity in itself. through subjects that re-build their identity starting from the refugee camp as a non-place acting the project of a new place instead of waiting the former, pre-nakba ein hod to come back. so believing that the other side of the valley belongs to palestinians as well as israelians. we project a place that doesn't live only in a few hours in a day but is always stirred by pulsating activities; where residential space is only the highest percentage of a different whole; where the sense of community will be re-affirmed and improved and the desire of re-appropriation become will for integration and exchange.

3] The first step can only be the creation of a possibility to choose in a framework of, not only political but mainly economical, independence. thus a participative attitude would grow consequently to conditions of physical proximity and collective use of spaces. we intend to activate a "commerce development" trough the progressive affirmation and interaction of internal dynamics of demand and productivity. we also aim those dynamics to be externalized to the scale of the association of forty.
autonomy won't mean introversion and segregation.

4] Ein Hud as the emblem of a condition that is common to 40 villages in the Israelian territories. we project a place that wants to be a prototype. its operative fields are so 100% generic and 100% specific at the same time. becoming a model for development and organization it is a test ground for a system that progressively determined in its specification can be applied everywhere else as well. trough this operation we aim to strengthen the interaction and exchange between actors that share the same conditions, enhancing the role of ein hud as a center for political debate and cultural confrontation as positive side effects.

5] how to act aiming such conditions where a control-based urban practice is not the right answer?
we offer the community a free planning tool-box. we give them a set of devices, capable to emphasize the self-org attitude they demonstrated to have. These tools are organized in a grammar, not a determined urban configuration but an open source for combinations of elements. They are high quality characters isolated for the construction of ein hud identity. We see the potential in the independence of these parts and the processes they can generate; the overlaps between them being highly relevant, while an a-synchrony in their affirmation in a long time span is nearly indifferent.

6] when a village comes from the progressive solidification of a temporary intended settlement, interstitial voids and infrastructures merge into an only seemingly public space.
exacerbated by topography this condition leads to the individuation of the street as the only public-lived instance.
the use of infrastructural gestures aims to reach a condition of re-institution of a truly mediterranean meaning to public spaces. to finally turn them into the stage of everyday behaviors we suggest a reterritorializing of interstitial spaces through the collocation of various episodes among them.

7] 1st: water urbanism. recognizing the significance of water in the birth of settlements in mediterranean culture we tried to enhance it as an operative instrument of physical synergy between infrastructure, housing and cultivation fields.
we intend to structure a constructed-wetlands network to purify peak waters, sepech waters.
making topography useful we avoid the need for mechanical devices in moving water.
the wetlands' system refers to defined groups of people/buildings.
we grant the possibility to control the discontinuity of water adduction by serial-organized systems of several wetlands.
this system offers several advantages for a small community, such as:
low costs of construction and maintenance;
no needed skilled labor;
minimal environmental impact;
cut power consumption by half.

8] 2nd: generators. elemental civic and cultural functions combined in systems of analogy and functional synergy produce ein hud's generators:

CITY HALL, MARKET, TAXI POINT, MULTIPURPOSE BUILDING, CARMEL PARK TOURISTS' ACCESS POINT, MOSQUE, SCHOOL+KINDERTGARTEN, GATE.

they are points of intensity and attraction transformed in order to strengthen former centralities or built to create new ones. Being public spaces for collective activities they are incubators of participation and development of wealth. At the same time their increasing complexity and mass will progressively state an achieved urban condition, leaving possibilities open for transformation according to arising needs.

9] participated territorialization of spaces in enhanced at all the scales. In the design of a multifunctional building a schematic model is defined to integrate the idea of a three dimensional attraversability with the placement of enclosed programmatic events. Following the idea of a souk, high congestion of mainly commercial activities under a shelter. A cultural strip crosses the covered space like a basic bar-code that hosts a room for education activities, a media center for meetings and internet public connection, a small auditorium that like a suspended staircase becomes a device to bring the light inside the exhibition space below that is also the bigger hall for public ceremonies, wedding parties, conferences and events related to the association of forty.
A medical center, a café and the guest house for the village strengthen the relevance of this building as a center reference for community life.
The architectonic determinations of this model interpretate the design of physical space like the creation of a topological device. The roof of the building accessible from the south-west side, where it meets the mountain, becomes a terrace where a fluid space is given for all kind of spontaneous behaviors and activities, from kids playing to economic activities. In continuity with the soil configuration we articulate in the ground in different levels, materially thought to shift from concrete platforms to compressed ground. While giving different qualities to ambiences they functionally define the walking surface in continuity between inside and outside in all directions.
An alternance of open air closed and covered spaces expresses as well the flexibility of a system where more or less partition can be created with canvas sails.

10] new housing: as the base for a unit of densification we use the constructed wetlands. they are placed as a sign on the territory, working for peak water until the construction starts inside its area of influence. a single wetland serves 5 houses that, measuring in today’s ein-hud parameters, means approximately 18,5 people. Every catchment area is divided in three sub-units: production (percentage of space for economic activities), plot (living area) and space for the collective (public spaces). This basic rule for growth implies that to an increase in population should result an enlargement of the municipality or a densification paying attention to the sub-units.

11] the new agricultural fields wanted to be one of the real way to improve the commercial net with the others village of the league of forty and also one way to give possibilities of employment. A particular attention to the local climate and the soil drove our decision to have vines, olive and oranges cultivation.

12] Hud-system is a self-prefabricated building technique that allows a fast and economic construction. It is based on two different modular construction items: one provides for pillar and/or beams and the other for slabs and/or walls. The first one is a single component destinated to be used both vertically and horizontally. It is constituted of a linear element hollowed in its center and with flanges in the four directions on its perimeter. The possibility of breaking and removing the flanges allows many typologies of joints. The flanges are punctured in order to be used as support for textile partitions. The hole in the pillar is meant to be filled either with reinforcements or with water canalizations. The second item is a set of simple panels which are first placed on the flanges of both pillars and beams and then fixed with bolts.