WIZO
The Wizo College arranged an architectural competition for the renovation and addition to an existing building (a music school). As winners of the competition, our firm carried out the renovation.
The proposal included the renovation of the 2,400 m2 existing building, the addition of a 2,000 m2 top floor with attics and a proposal for phase two: an addition of 8,000 m2 of three new buildings and an underground parking lot. The project was awarded the 2007 "design award" for educational buildings.
Renovation and expansion of the old building: The old building was a music school designed according to the modernistic style. It had three floors with a system of vertical concrete columns and horizontal beams extending from the ceiling. A 10/10 open patio was placed at the middle of the building. The old building was out of place within the German colony's urban fabric with its size and appearance.
The architectural concept: The challenge was to accommodate a building of this sort to the German colony with its small scaled red roofed templar buildings. Our firm didn't see any reason to transform a "modernistic" building into a "templar" building a therefore we created a "screen wall" made of steel and wood that will mark the building's façade as "new" and also and also add the wood as part of the local material pallet that bonds the building to its surroundings.
The wooden louvers are a climate solution providing shade for the long facades that are mostly facing the east and west.
The facades contain narrow balconies overlooking south to the Carmel mountain and the Bahai gardens, north to the sea and west to Ben-Gurion boulevard.
Type
Public, Education
Locations
Haifa
Client
The Wizo College
The 2007 winners of the design award: Ot Haitzuv
The process of "connection" with the building was made with the inner movement elements and the passages through the project. The architecture for the interior elements are dynamic and contemporary and is expressed by the shapes and the materials that are concrete, steel, wood and glass. It is meant to express the "spirit" of the college as a school for design.
The open patio was raised and closed with a "skylight" that is blocked at the center and translucent at its sides in a way that it reinterprets the patio's borders.
Elements of movement and passages were brought into the patio. The elements are diagonal, contrary to the building. Elements like the "bridge" on the third floor and the passages at other floors. These passages are made of steel with railings made of perforated plates and wooden handles.
At the ground floor, in the middle of the patio, there is an art gallery. The gallery exhibits works of the students and other artists and is open to the public.
The urban opening: Between the Ganim street, the college and the Ben-Gurion boulevard with its templar buildings, an urban space is formed – "The Wizo square". The square was designed by the landscape architect Greenstein - Har-Gil. The square contains a building and is paved with stone. The local olive trees were preserved and new trees were added along with pergolas for shading. The square is used for urban activities and outdoors activities for the college.
