|
|
עמוד:19
107 quantitative planning methods, where complex relationships between man and his environment are defined by matrixes and formulas . I adopted this logical and systematic working process, which enabled me to identify and separate the various elements of a building required by the program and combine them to a whole . This resulted in plans that at the conventional level were indeed neat, reasoned and coherent . The projects that grew out of this basically mechanistic methodology met the physical and social needs of their users, but only partially answered their emotional and spiritual needs . In other words, this methodology was not aimed to create buildings with a soul . The Disappointment of the modernism led to a search for new ways . In the early 1970 's I left the Technion and moved to London to continue my studies at the A . A . - the well known school of architecture . I found a school where the main theme in teaching architecture was conceptual . This was in line with conceptual art starting to flourish at that time, first exposed in an exhibition named "When Attitude Becomes Form", held at the ICA ) Institute of Contemporary Arts ( gallery in London . It became a landmark in the art world . In discussions held at the time in the A . A by main stream followers, man‘s environment was conceived as a mere metaphor for science fiction, completely ignoring and even belittling anyone who tried to speak about the emotional - human experiential relation between man and place . This conceptual approach developed, and led later on to the emergence of new movements, each one attempting in its own way to find a solution and a way out of the disappointment and despair brought on by modern architecture . Among them, the "Archigram" in London ) Based on their theory, years later the Pompidou Center was designed 15 by other architects in Paris ( , the post modernistic stream - The New York Five on the east coast of the U . S, The New Tradition clinging to the past and the deconstruction stream still starring today . These movements, although different from each other, have one thing in common and that is their basic assumption that there is no absolute truth behind architecture and that beauty and comfort are subjective concepts that have to do with style, fashion and the personal vision of the creator . In fact this assumption denied any objective public discussion on the definition of beautiful architecture Not one of these movements attempted to seriously confront the crisis at hand or make changes in order to resolve it . In 1973 I completed my studies in London and returned to Israel . My first commission was planning the house of the writer David Shutz in Jerusalem . The site was internal with a small opening onto the street . Stone buildings surrounded it from all sides and in the center was a lemon tree . Unlike the conventional planning process which took place on the drawing board in the office today on the computer screen ( and then transferred ) to the site, here all planning decisions were taken by me on the site itself . I sat on the site for hours, trying to feel and experience physically what had happened there ; I tried to listen to the "voices" of the place itself . Instead of "relieving" myself of any constraints and thereby uprooting the tree, the first planning decision I made was to leave the lemon tree in its place and design the house around it . In order to decide about the precise boundaries of the courtyard I walked back and forth ; I was looking for the boundaries that would "feel right" . I marked them on the ground using red chalk, and this signified the actual place on which the walls of the building would be erected . From the exhibition : "When Attitudes become form", ICA Gallery, London, 1969 . The boundaries of the planned house were dictated and marked according to the location of the lemon tree in the courtyard, the Shutz residence, Jerusalem .
|
פורטוגלי, נילי
|