Introduction

Project of the Year Contest
 

The virtual world rules the coop and is undoubtedly infiltrating the offices at a digital rate. Out of around 200 projects submitted to the Project of the Year Competition only 70 were actually completed buildings, 20 are in various stages of building or planning, and the rest either haven’t reached the stage of realization or are student works - creative beyond expectations.
 

This may be somewhat of a consolation: if the computer world is indeed central, its advantages should best be exploited by those who are most adept at it - as long as we have the chance to keep an eye on them.
 

There is, of course, a vast difference between a project just born of the computer-womb, and a built project that has successfully managed to survive the obstacles of reality - the master-plan, authorities, client, foreman, entrepreneur, and recently - a new function known as the ‘project manager’, who knows how to nitpick the architects to the point of leaving them with little desire to work.
 

At any rate, the unbuilt (or partially unbuilt) projects received relatively high scores, and we hope that their publication will legitimate their realization. To our delight, this year there were quite a few works from abroad - Iran, Poland, Norway, Chile, Turkey and Egypt - some of which achieved especially high scores. As opposed to that, two categories were particularly disappointing this year - environment/landscape and research. Both had relatively few works submitted, and some of the judges refrained from grading them at all.
 

The judging was done in three stages: the first stage passed about a 20% of the works to the second stage; the intermediate stage determined which works would be published here, and which would have honorary mention, and therefore be published in the next issue;
 

The final stage determined the first three works in each of the six categories.

This panel included the following architects: Hani Rashid - Asymptote NY; winners of the 2006 Israel Prize for Architecture Ada Karmi- Melamede and Ya’acov Ya’ar; Baruch Baruch - head of Wizo Haifa School of Architecture; Aliza Braude - winner of 2006 Project of the Year in the landscape category; and Dr. Ami Ran - editor of Architecture of Israel.
 

The jury panel of the first stage included architects: David Guggenheim (chair), Shraga Kirshner - head of the Dept. of Building Design at Shenkar College, Tula Amir, Tzadik Elyakim, Yonatan Shiloni, Osvaldo Stav, Oren Onn, Ilan Midar, Dorit Malin, Nili Haraj  and Tomer Nawi, as well as students Shmuel Bahar, Maayan Aliman and Yossi Israelshvili.