RABIN CENTER FOR ISRAEL STUDIES

Guest of honor at the inauguration of the Rabin Center for  Israel Studies, ex-President Bill Clinton, opened his speech with unusual faltering words:' the brilliant architect …'

The fact that none of the guests could realize that construction would end only a year ahead, perfectly matched the impressive atmosphere of show that characterized the building on this festive occasion. As to the future, the statement of purpose of architect Moshe Safdie reads: 'The Center grew from the American Presidential library. It combines memory, history and education under one roof; a place where the man and the legend are revealed - the soldier, the vision and the way.'

Hence, overlooking the Yarkon Park from above the limestone hill of Ramat Aviv, the center will probably function properly, at least as a memorial building, as already prior to the inauguration evening, the building managed to arouse the curiosity of hundreds of thousands of people.

As with other buildings of Safdie, the concept is already there.  The structure is arranged chronologically - the massive podium is dedicated to Rabin ‘the fighter’, while the rise upwards describes the politician who transformed his sword into spade. An organized system of symbols is embedded in the building, starting with a Guggenheim-like spiral museum, through rhythmic arcades in a neo-institution style, and ending in hovering hoods reminiscent of the peace dove whose wings were cut with the Prime Minister’s murder. The landscape completes the formalistic design: on one side the Hussein garden, and on the other - the Clinton Garden, both active partners in the struggle for peace.

The question is whether in several years, people will understand  why a center that represents a shy and humble man, is barricaded towards the city in a huge and plain wall. Why, in fact does a contextualist like Safdie choose to veil almost flagrantly a power plant built in the fifties by German engineers?

One of the possibilities is that Safdie simply preferred to erase any functional “scars” of the power plant, assuming they were no longer relevant, ignoring the “trivial” fact that they were there before. Although Safdie has never tried to be fashionable, he promised that the lower part of the stone screen would be dismantled to reveal the original concrete wall of the plant, as soon as the I.D.F. Museum, to be housed there, is completed. 

However, it is worth looking at a current trend that Safdie adopted in his Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem. The trend, denoted by several theorists as Landform Architecture, is an opposite version of the Land-Art of the 1960s. While the latter was characterized by designing the site with bulldozers (Robert Smithson), Land-Form structures get their shape from the site, whether it is built or not. A substantial part of such structures is buried underground, and even when it does emerge outside, it projects an architectural effort to blend in with its environment.

In his article “Architecture in the New Paradigm”, Ayser Arida claims that it is only the generation born into a culture that has been shaped by the new knowledge-based discoveries, which can make the shift to the next paradigm. Structures like Rabin Center that involve digital technology in the construction can serve  such paradigmatic transitions.

Since this super-contextual trend also combines ecological ideology, which is increasingly popular in this ozone-ripped era, it carries an educational quality as well. However, the architectural value of these buildings lies mainly in their ability to blur distinctions between outside and inside, new and old, thus providing the visitor with an enriching experience of space. A well known example is the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, which provided Zaha Hadid with the Pritzker Prize in Architecture. Another - is the Aronoff Center at the University of Cincinnati designed by Peter Eisenman, which blends the old with the new, using  ramps, oscillating waves and phase shifts until the distinction between the two is blurred.

In order to be politically correct, it is only fair to mention that some of these spatial qualities are expressed one way or another in many of Safdies buildings, especially those adjacent to water - and almost all of them are.

But today, when it is obvious to all that the new has no right to take the place of the old, it should be checked whether someone fell asleep on guard; were there guards on duty at all? How many 50-year-old power plants are there remaining in Israel? Would anyone think of veiling the plants at Reading, Naharaim or Haifa under a new building?