Report - Final Proposal

Group 05: Q Foccaert, P Matuszek, M Mikus & L Pinson

Master of Architecture I. - Theoretical Component of uAD Studio with Martine de Maeseneer, Nel Janssens & Koen de Wandeler School of Architecture Sint-Lucas Brussels 2009/2010

Scope of Study

The following report is a Master I. studio project

concerning urban Architectural Design and City

Planning.

The studio project aims to develop suitable

proposal for the city of Haifa, in particular the site

of the Memorial Park.

This report is based on research and appraisal in

key areas of social, cultural, political and economic

context which guide the building construction.



Content

1/ Introduction

2/ History

3/ Planning & Agendas

4/ Society & Culture

5/ Religion

6/ Nature

7/ Economy

8/ Technology

10/ Interference

9/ Ark - Arche - Archive

11/ Studio Work

12/ References



INTRODUCTION

As the future prosperity of Haifa largely depends

on improving relations with the neighbours, the

aim of the project is to identify the key area for

potential consensus and come up with a proposal

which promotes social & cultural cohesion at the

local level - acting as a precedent for the entire

region. The site represents an opportunity to

approach the Near East conflict beyond the

political agendas and address the 'troubles' from

the bottom up - by creating a space which shall

forge a new attitude based on principles of an

'open city'. As the dialog is not likely to be initiated

in the capital neither the religious centre of the

country, it could be Haifa for its record of peaceful

coexistence which can become a key actor in the

peace process.



HISTORY

Two major shifts of status of the regional

importance:

1/ During the Ottoman Period in 1860’s because of

European siege on Acco consulates and merchants

moved to Haifa.

2/ Since the War of Independence in 1948,

regional importance has moved from Haifa to Tel-

Aviv the capital of a new national state.

During the British Mandate - the city was planned

and developed for purposes of the British Empire

as a strategic industrial and commercial centre of

Palestine. Development of the seaport, railway

junction, oil pipeline to Iraq and refinery before

the WWII attracted large number of new residents

and established the city as a gateway and

transport hub into the entire region.

As a result of political conflicts with surrounding

countries, despite key role of Haifa during building

the nation state and substantial influx of

inhabitants during that period, the city has lost its

significance for the new capital located to the

south, further from the state borders with

alienated countries. While Jerusalem is considered

as the religious city and Tel-Aviv the bourgeois,

Haifa has a reputation of the workers' city.

PLANNING & AGENDAS

The first regulatory document for the city dates

back to the colonial period. The Skeleton Zoning

Scheme was produced in 1934 and introduced

modernist planning principles including the

concept of Green Belt and Garden City. Despite

that there have been two other masterplans

proposed in 1950's and 1960's, none of them have

been approved as the colonial zoning plan created

suitable conditions for the nation state strategies.

While colonial attempts to transform the city were

made in the name of modern urban planning, the

national endeavour was based on a far-reaching

political agenda. (Kolodney and Kallus, 2008)

As a result, the Old City and the oldest

neighbourhood Wadi Salib were completely

erased and the development took direction

towards hardly accessible slopes and sometimes

isolated locations on the Mount Carmel.



SOCIETY & CULTURE

Haifa today has a population of 266,300. The

population of Haifa today is 80% Israeli Jews, 4%

Muslim, 6% Christian Arab, and 10% members of

other faiths or nonreligious (the vast majority

being immigrants from the former Soviet Union).

As the Jewish residents are ageing and youth leave

the city, the proportion of Arabic people is

growing.

The inner-city neighbourhoods are relatively

homogeneous - Wadi Nisnas, Abbas and Halissa

represent concentration of the Arab life in the city,

while in Hadar, the most of people speak Russian

because of the latest immigration of Jewish from

the countries of the former Soviet Union in the

1990s. The oldest city neighbourhood Wadi Salib

remains abandoned with many houses in ruins or

boarded up.

Modern population of Haifa, particularly the

Jewish community counts people from all corners

of the world. Haifa is thus similarly multicultural

and diverse as Brussels in Belgium, Melbourne in

Australia or Auckland in New Zealand to name a

few. Despite that people of Haifa have earned the

city’s reputation of peaceful coexistence; this has

not been formally encouraged by planning

strategies nor expressed through the Architecture.



RELIGION

Religion is a socio-cultural phenomenon which has

played an important role in the city and the region.

Haifa is home to all four Abrahamic religions:

Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahai faith. All

of these share in common the Torah as an initial

sacred text. As the history of religion refers to

written record of human religious experiences and

ideas, the beginning of this period is related to the

invention of writing.

Writing is an extension of the human language and

represents means for transmitting information

across the time and space. By definition, the

modern practice of history begins with written

records; evidence of human culture without

writing is the realm of prehistory. Sacred

scriptures allowed the Jewish and other ethnic and

religious groups to preserve their history and

identity over long periods of time in disparate

parts of the world. Despite that religion represents

one of the main differences between the Jewish

and the Arabs; it also defines the basic principles

and origins which are common for the both – the

sacred scriptures.

Looking for an underlying principle or root of

existing things leads to arche which refers to the

beginnings of Philosophy or a shift from the

mythological to rational explanation of the world

phenomena based on logical arguments. The word

arche is akin to the Noah’s Ark and also to its

newer version – the archive. Archive is a repository

of information which provides evidence about the

history and source of information for the future

generations.

NATURE

According to Kevin Lynch, people perceive cities as

consisting of underlying city form “elements” such

as path, edge, node, landmark and district. In one

of his studies, most people mention water and

vegetation, as those kinds of elements which give

a strong image. (Lynch, K., 1960) Abundance of

greenery and the water in particular is one of the

most important features, which define the city - it

is the edge of the city - a place where another

world begins. Except from the neighbourhood of

Bat Galim, this natural phenomenon represents a

missed opportunity.

The greatest opportunity lays in the seaside,

particularly the area stretching from Bat Galim to

the Port's Customs House, which remains fenced

as an industrial zone belonging to the Port of

Haifa. This area represents a missed opportunity

to reconnect the city to the water and promote it

as a public space belonging to all avoiding the

tiring political, religious and other themes.



ECONOMY

"We are on our own here, if something breaks

down…"

Despite its strategic gateway location, the country

is an island in terms of energy infrastructure. Since

1948, the British-built pipeline to Haifa remained

dormant, it symbolizes dead end situation of the

city within the country and the country within the

Near East. The issue of oil becomes more and

more critical with each passing year, for Western

democracies in general, and for Israel in particular.

Oil coming through the existing infrastructure

could provide a much-needed break for the

flagging local economy.

TECHNOLOGY

In order to compensate limited access to natural

resources, there has been a greater emphasis on

research and development of new technologies.

Haifa as a part of Silicon Wadi - the cluster of high-

tech cities became recognized worldwide for its

achievements in Computer Science. Development

of new technologies and quality education at the

Technion and University of Haifa, can make the

city attractive also for students from the whole

Near East. Young generation from neighbouring

countries would help to establish an open

international atmosphere.

DOWNTOWN

Growth of the information technologies and the

advanced transportation systems has triggered a

shift from a state-centred world of boundaries to a

city-centred world of flows. The cities increasingly

depend on the level of integration within the

global city network. (GaWC, Loughborough

University) As the businesses and important

companies move from Haifa to Tel-Aviv, the city

struggles to keep skilled professionals which

attract advanced producer companies. Except

from the government institutions and the Port,

there is very little which can bring them to the

Downtown. Difficult topography and the fact that

the key city assets - shopping centres, two

universities and the IT technology park are

scattered around the city, cause problems with

accessibility and movement.

Spatial and social disintegration was exacerbated

by constructing a new market closer to the Jewish

neighbourhood Hadar. More recently there has

been a trend of constructing shopping facilities

closer to more affluent neighbourhoods on the

Mount Carmel or in the city outskirts. As there is

none or very little of what would remind of a truly

public pedestrian active area, there are initiatives

to reanimate the city by making the Downtown

more attractive for the young generation. The

downtown fails to fulfil a basic function of

contemporary city centres as a space of cultural

consumption.



CONCLUSION

To conclude this analysis, one could argue that the

city has suffered from political and socio-cultural

issues exacerbated by the modernist planning,

declining economy and difficult topography which

have torn the urban fabric and its people apart. As

a result, the city took shape of a poorly integrated

system, which largely depends on the car travel.

The city is characteristic by a non-linear street

pattern following the topographical contours,

serpentines, loops but also dead ends. The existing

integrating factors of the city - such as staircases

interconnecting the streets, open public spaces,

public transport and the civic facilities – appear to

be outdated, insufficient or completely missing.

Erasing the existing and overlaying by new, events

of the 20th century uprooted a large part of the

city identity which caused a social and cultural

discontinuity. However, well-balanced cities

provide a balance between the new and old,

renewal and preservation, between innovation

and tradition; we believe that this gap between

the past and the recent history is one of the main

causes severing the image of the city. Even though

Haifa can be proud of the progressive Bauhaus

architecture brought during the British Mandate,

the city identity and roots of the cultural heritage

of the local people reach further into the history.

SPATIAL STRATEGIES

We propose three basic strategies:

01/ Integrate the city through improving the

existing and adding new public spaces and

pedestrian routes. (Space Syntax)

02/ Regenerate the area of Wadi Salib. The oldest

neighbourhood of city, which remains derelict,

should be listed as part of the state cultural

heritage and restored as a university

accommodation.

03/ Reducing need of car travel by improving the

public transport and continually encouraging the

single use areas and campuses to move their

departments into the Downtown.





Space Syntax Analysis of Integration

The graph shows that the German Colony - the

area between the Port and the Baha’i Gardens - is

the most integrated part of the city. The

competition site is indicated black.



Space Syntax Integration As Proposed

The city can be reintegrated by enhancing existing

and adding new connections. Red indicates the

most integrated parts of the city.

1/ improving pedestrian connections around the

competition site towards the Old City

2/ Establishing a strong link between the Hertzl

Street to the Grand Canyon – a future gateway to

residential areas on the Mount Carmel

3/ creating a bridge to the neighbourhood Neve

Sha’anan





THE SITE

Despite that the waterfront area has got a great

potential to integrate the local people avoiding the

political, religious and other tiring themes, the

scope of our project is to come with future

scenario for El Burj. Situated at the intersection of

the civic and cultural axes, history of the site is

associated with a fortress which used to overlook

the seaport and the Old City. As the fortress

remained unbuilt since its demolition in , the site

represents a neutral space located amidst the

main character areas - Old City, Hadar, Wadi Salib

and Wadi Nisnas. Situated at the boundaries of

these strained Downtown areas, El Burj thus

represents a natural destination for a civic space,

which could act as a local landmark and place of an

overlapping interest. We suggest that

development of the regional archives surrounded

by a library and a new open public space shall

successfully revise the memorial meaning of the

site and reinstate a link between the past and

future. Same as the old seaport used to be an

integral part of the city, importance of the site can

be extended through a public library – the main

access point to the information and digital

highway which connects the city to the world.

Promoting Haifa as a gateway city, our proposal

aims to create regional archives as a place with

ambient and respectful atmosphere, which would

be acting as the functional memorial. It will find its

place in the city much faster and better than

conventional memorials which could be pushing a

finger into historical wounds. Let the history be

present in the city but in more rational way. Our

intention is to connect the archives with

contemporary library which assumes multiple

social responsibilities. The civic space will become

a lifestyle destination where people get a chance

to meet each in a casual or intellectual

atmosphere.

We let the existing topography impact on the

design using local features such as staircases and

terraces, that will interconnect the library with a

plaza attracting people to enter the site. We want

to translate this idea onto a distorted pattern

reminding of a maze to let people get lost and

found thmeselve again in this new public realm.



Ark – Archē – Archive



ARK

Main Entry: ark Etymology: Middle English, from Old English arc, from Latin arca chest; akin to Latin arcēre to hold off, defend, Greek arkein, Hittite hark- to have, hold Date: before 12th century 1 a : a boat or ship held to resemble that in which Noah and his family were preserved from the Flood b : something that affords protection and safety 2 a : the sacred chest representing to the Hebrews the presence of God among them b : a repository traditionally in or against the wall of a synagogue for the scrolls of the Torah

ARCHE Main Entry: arch- Etymology: Middle English arche-, arch-, from Old English & Anglo-French; Old English arce-, from Late Latin arch- & Latin archi-; Anglo-French arch-, from Late Latin arch- & Latin archi- from Greek arch-, archi-, from archein to begin, rule; akin to Greek archē beginning, rule, archos ruler 1 : chief : principal <archfiend> 2 : extreme : most fully embodying the qualities of the kind <archconservative> Arche is a Greek word with primary senses 'beginning', 'origin' or 'first cause' and 'power', 'domination' as extended meanings.[1] This list is extended to 'ultimate underlying substance' and 'ultimate undemonstrable principle'.[2] In the language of the archaic period (8th-6th century BC) arche (or archai) designates the source, origin or root of things that exist. If a thing is to be well established or founded, its arche or starting point must be secure. In the ancient Greek Philosophy: Aristotle forgrounded the meaning of arche as the element or principle

ARCHIVE Main Entry: 1ar·chive

of a thing, which although ndemonstrable and intangible in itself, provides the conditions of the possibility of that thing. [3]

Etymology: French & Latin; French, from Latin archivum, from Greek archeion government house (in plural, official documents), from archē rule, government — more at ARCH- Date: 1603 1 : a place in which public records or historical documents are preserved; also : the material preserved —often used in plural 2 : a repository or collection especially of information Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information. Revolutionary milestone which stood at the beginning of the Western science was introducing Arabic numerals by Fibonacci. The word algorithm derives from algorism, which is the technique of performing basic arithmetic by writing numbers in decimal positional notation. Computer science finds its roots in algorithmic processes that create, describe, and transform information. Similarly as a path through a city or a maze, algorithm is a list of instructions for completing a task - starting from an initial state, the instructions describe series of successive states. In the context of a city it is necessary, that this transition from one place to the next is not deterministic.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arch-�









TRADITIONAL MORPHOLOGY Instead of planning a trip ahead with a map or using

a GPS as we got used to today, orientation in cities

which evolved naturally relied on following the

longest visibility sightlines and use of intuition.

Images show that layouts of a traditional Arabic

neighbourhood and one example of a medieval

town in Europe – both carry similar feature of a

distorted grid. In order to find the way, one moves

around an open space to explore the sightlines of

alternative paths. The routes across the site allow

the pedestrians to let themselves guided by their

intuition when finding their route and to explore

alternative paths. Situating the entries onto the

diagonal of the plaza shall encourage people to

enter into the library.

ARABIC

Introverted buildings

Narrow corridors with minimum of open public

space to protect from hot climate

EUROPEAN

Perimeter blocks with main facades oriented

towards the street or open plazas











Studio Work

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

(Herman Melville)

As the resources about the city were primarily

electronic and experiences of the local

phenomena, atmospheres, rhythms and ways of

how the local people use the space were mediated

by others or electronically, there had been a

tendency to process the information in more

general than particular way. Despite that we

haven’t arrived to by all means detail design, this

studio project has shown how multifaceted and

complex design and redevelopment of the built

environment is and how to compensate the

limited access to information.



REFERENCES

Zohar, A

Documents

Report - Final Proposal