Spontaneous Architecture: Mitzpe Ramon

cover photo: SABA 2013, Spring in Hiriya: Guy Ehrlich, Michelle Hites, Shamir Zalkin / Humanesting

In spring 2013 SABA arrived at Park Ariel Sharon in Hiriya. Initiated by Dr. Martin Weyl and planned by Latz+Partner, this project strives to rehabilitate the garbage mountain that has been sprawling in this place since the end of the Independence War, to develop 8000 Dunums of open areas, fields, streams and ponds and to re-use them for various cultural, natural and leisure activities. During the semester, the students studied the park and its environmental challenges; they had to plan and to build 4 structures that cast shadows of 25 sqm each. The budget was fixed to zero. The structures will stand in the park from June 24th for 10 days.

Toward a non-violent architecture: Summer 2014 in India

‪In summer 2014, between September 11th and October 23rd, Spontaneous Architecture returned to India for an International studio held in collaboration with CARE school of Architecture in Trichy.

‪The program combined a 3-week intensive traveling seminar in 3 very different Indian Cities (New Delhi, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad) with a 3-week spontaneous architecture workshop at the KVK research agricultural farm in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.‬

‪During this workshop, Israeli and Indian students worked together and designed and built 6 small structures that would serve for farmers' markets and exhibitions.‬

Black Water, Grey Water: Spring 2014 at OCCUPYTLV Tent City

In summer 2011 Tel Aviv experienced a huge wave of protest, mainly due to the housing prices. The protest occupied the city's center during all the summer, From July 14th, when young Dafni Leaf spontaneously erected a tent in Rothschild Boulevard to the September 3rd "One Million Demonstration" in Kikar Hanedina [State Piazza). Soon later, most of the protesters packed their tents and went back to their too expensive homes, leaving behind only those who insisted to stay and many others, who did not have anywhere else to go.

On November 27th 2012, in accordance to an agreement originally made between the activist Tamir Hajaj and the Tel Aviv Municipality, the remains of the summer 2011 Tel Aviv protest Tent City were removed from Rothschild Boulevard and exiled to the Volovelsky-Karney park. Situated in the Tel Aviv's north eastern margins, the park was a green island surrounded by one of Israel's heaviest traffic, Tel Aviv's Central railway Station, Namir Road, Petach Tikva Road, Ayalon Freeway (hence its most common name, "Tsomet Parachat Drahim" - Crossroads Junction). The location was chosen because it was one of the only parks in Tel Aviv with public toilettes.

In 2013, a large portion of the park, about a third, was fenced to become the construction site of the "Loop", a new, gigantic infrastructural project which is to add a new connection to the Ayalon freeway and maybe one day would become a new station of Tel Aviv's mysterious Metropolitan train system. Tent-dwellers residing in the fenced area where asked to move to the unfenced area. The public toilettes was demolished; chemical toilettes offered and maintained by a private subcontractor of the project 's contractor were placed instead.

Today, OCCUPYTLV Tent City oscillates between a protest sit-in, a homeless shelter and a favela, and is occupied by few dozens of individuals . Each one of the occupiers has his own reasons to be there, they all protest either by protesting or by their mere survival in this place. However, apart sharing the shrinking space and infrastructures, the only thing they have in common is that none of them wishes to form a community with the others, and they do not form any organized community.

During spring 2014 SABA worked at OCCUPYTLV Tent City.

Summer 2013, Mitzpe Ramon

Located almost in the middle of route 40 from Beer-Sheva to Eilat and situated on the edge of the Ramon Makhtesh - the world's largest makhtesh (erosion cirque in the form of crater), Mitzpe Ramon was first settled in 1951 for a brief period of time by the asphalt workers of the route.

Few years later, in 1956, it was founded as a cooperative settlement for the mineral mining workers. A year later the cooperative was dismantled and the state took over: the small settlement soon became a tiny "development town" designed according the state planning apparatus of the late fifties, stacking new immigrants from Morocco in public housing projects.

In the following decades few more populations moved in:

During the Eighties, with IDF's redeployment in the Negev after the retreat from Sinai, Mitzpe Ramon absorbed a new population of Military professionals' families; in the Nineties new immigrants from former USSR; from the end of the 20th century few religious communities as well as a massive wave of young population of professionals and artists attracted to the spectacular landscapes of the desert.

Mitzpe Ramon is toady a local Council surrounded by the Har Hanegev Regional Council. Mitzpe's population counts some 5000 inhabitants. In the last decade Mitzpe Ramon tries shifting from the industrial and mining uses originally planned to eco-tourism: The hangars industrial zone has been transformed into an arts and crafts quarter, the stone quarries have been closed down and are about to be restored, a new luxury hotel, "Bereshit", was built near the Makhtesh's cliffs.

SABA will be working in Mitzpe Ramon from August 25th 2013 to October 2nd.

Spring 2013: Spring in Hirya

During the semester, the students studied the park and its environmental challenges; they had to plan and to build 4 structures that cast shadows of 25 sqm each. The budget was fixed to zero. The structures will stand in the park from June 24th for 10 days.