We wanted to take advantage of the existing conditions of the barrier wall and the vacant land strip to create an unusual public park that allows intimate/private human activities to exist in the public domain.
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The project’s main façade to the residential street is a see-through wall with a wooden entry gate to an outdoor room lying between the existing barrier wall and the new wall. Both are at the same height but one is obstructive and the other is inviting. Bold pink neon sign written; “the REAL estate”, suggesting that the real assets of dense urban cities are outdoor public spaces.
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For the surface of the park, we laid a continuous fabric formed concrete “blanket” that wraps over the existing acoustic barrier wall. The continuous surface starts on a man-made horizontal landscape and changes gradually to a sloped vertical wall.
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In this surface we curved seven cut-out wood niches that perform as intimate private spaces in the public urban landscape. Each niche takes the form of the human body as a single, couple or a group.
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The project is collaboration between architect Avi Laiser, and performance artist Dana Hirsch Laiser. Dana has worked with teenagers form the local community center to create movement performances that will happen at the site. The focus of the work was to explore individual human behavior in the private domain and introduce it to the public domain. The performances created a dialogue with the unique qualities of the built project and presented to the visitors the free essence of feeling at home outside.
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The project was presented as part of the Bat-Yam international Biennale of landscape urbanism 2008 and received an award at the landscape design category, from the project of the year competition held by Israeli Architecture Quarterly magazine.
