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Architects: Ami Shinar – Amir Mann
- Area: 8500 m²
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Dana Polo
Text description provided by the architects. The basic concept behind the Z Design building, located next to Design Museum Holon (by Ron Arad), is the expression of the basic residential"aggregate"– the apartment –almost as an independent unit. This articulation is achieved simply as each second floor (containing four apartments) rotates around the building core relative to the two floors below or above. Thus also every second apartment gains a large 30 sqm "roof terrace", as an integral element of building mass.
The rich volumetric composition of the whole building is achieved almost as a by-product of that simple shift. Thus also another feature is gained: no more "main" and "side" facades;each side of the building is as important.
Of course this design maybe a renewal of old, quite forgotten ideas, such as Safdie's1967 Habitat in Montreal, Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo (1972) and less known "Patio Building" in Beer-Sheva, Israel, by Lufenfeld-Gamerman, 1965. However most such pioneering experiments somehow have vanished.
The Z Design Building with its "revolving" geometry reproduces this old-new vocabulary, while simply and economically constructed as conventional concrete skeleton with on-site prefab walls installed on it.In 30 or 40 story high buildings it will just as well be implemented: we may envision a whole city block designed accordingly with low-rise street buildings surrounding some tall ones in between, around a small open public space.
Exterior finishes are quite basic, consisting mainly of cut white stone, integrated into the on-site cast-in place wall units. Recessed planes are cladded with grey granite while small areas between windows and balcony edges are cladded in aluminum. We may say that the building's beauty lies in its logic of volumetric formation, almost regardless of any expensive finish materials.
