pride and prejudice
editorial
pride and prejudice
We sat there in the big and painfully depressing room of the district appeals committee - the ?appealed? architect, the appealing architect who dared rise against the local authority for dismissing his claims as if they had been uttered by Carrie Bradshaw from ?Sex and the City?, and the expert witness - a veteran architect with a record that could cover a city, and opposite us - expressionless wax dolls, rubber stamps for the chairman - a lawyer with the aspirations of a judge, sitting on ?Elijah the Prophet?s Chair? as if he were George the 3rd.
The case was no more than a routine attempt of a municipality to approve the building of three private swimming pools on a plot of a dunam, with the minimal deviation of 70% from the side building line. But - as was written by the verdict of the appeals committee who ignored all the professional claims of the brave Architects Association representative - ?the appellant did not prove that plan might bother him', for after all, 'a previous precedent by the same committee already stated that 'the claim as if a swimming pool is a noisy environment is mere prejudice'.
It is no secret that in the last few years the lawyers? guild has grown to the size of a boil and for every 'honest' citizen there are at least three lawyers. However, this does not mean that our lives have to run according to a legislative reality which bears no resemblance to the real one. Moreover, if there is a body that lives, breathes and worships prejudice, it is the legalistic world, where each clause or precedent is given the weight of god?s words. That is - wherever there is precedence, there is no law, and the authority can safely pee on common sense and on the always inevitable difference from case to case, not to mention the poor souls subjected to their mercy.
And let it be clear, I am not advocating a life without law, lacking which we may even gain some happiness in our pressing reality, but am rather against the daily bullying of the little man, who will never understand what motivates the authority to lie on the fence for one citizen at the expense of the other?s well-being. And in the words of Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska:
?I will never know what A thought of me. If B forgave me completely. Why C pretended all was well. What D?s part was in E?s silence. What F hoped for, if he did. Why G forgot although she knew well. What H had to hide. What J wanted to add. If her being around had any meaning for K, and for all the rest of the alphabet? (?Colon?).
In this poetic vein, I don't really care what motivates Bibi to change the Planning and Building Law, but before he decides to reinforce the local authorities' power - as if they can't cause us grief without it - I suggest he check why, for god's sake, committees dealing with architectural matters are not chaired by architects, but rather by lawyers, who are no more qualified in architecture than I am in law.
On this opportunity, I?d like to congratulate the representative of the Architects Association - architect Michael Gofer - for his daring yet Don Quixote attempt to introduce into the legalistic committee some architectural wisdom. I take off my architect's hat in his honor - it doesn't count anyway.
Architect Dr. Ami Ran
We sat there in the big and painfully depressing room of the district appeals committee - the ?appealed? architect, the appealing architect who dared rise against the local authority for dismissing his claims as if they had been uttered by Carrie Bradshaw from ?Sex and the City?, and the expert witness - a veteran architect with a record that could cover a city, and opposite us - expressionless wax dolls, rubber stamps for the chairman - a lawyer with the aspirations of a judge, sitting on ?Elijah the Prophet?s Chair? as if he were George the 3rd.
The case was no more than a routine attempt of a municipality to approve the building of three private swimming pools on a plot of a dunam, with the minimal deviation of 70% from the side building line. But - as was written by the verdict of the appeals committee who ignored all the professional claims of the brave Architects Association representative - ?the appellant did not prove that plan might bother him', for after all, 'a previous precedent by the same committee already stated that 'the claim as if a swimming pool is a noisy environment is mere prejudice'.
It is no secret that in the last few years the lawyers? guild has grown to the size of a boil and for every 'honest' citizen there are at least three lawyers. However, this does not mean that our lives have to run according to a legislative reality which bears no resemblance to the real one. Moreover, if there is a body that lives, breathes and worships prejudice, it is the legalistic world, where each clause or precedent is given the weight of god?s words. That is - wherever there is precedence, there is no law, and the authority can safely pee on common sense and on the always inevitable difference from case to case, not to mention the poor souls subjected to their mercy.
And let it be clear, I am not advocating a life without law, lacking which we may even gain some happiness in our pressing reality, but am rather against the daily bullying of the little man, who will never understand what motivates the authority to lie on the fence for one citizen at the expense of the other?s well-being. And in the words of Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska:
?I will never know what A thought of me. If B forgave me completely. Why C pretended all was well. What D?s part was in E?s silence. What F hoped for, if he did. Why G forgot although she knew well. What H had to hide. What J wanted to add. If her being around had any meaning for K, and for all the rest of the alphabet? (?Colon?).
In this poetic vein, I don't really care what motivates Bibi to change the Planning and Building Law, but before he decides to reinforce the local authorities' power - as if they can't cause us grief without it - I suggest he check why, for god's sake, committees dealing with architectural matters are not chaired by architects, but rather by lawyers, who are no more qualified in architecture than I am in law.
On this opportunity, I?d like to congratulate the representative of the Architects Association - architect Michael Gofer - for his daring yet Don Quixote attempt to introduce into the legalistic committee some architectural wisdom. I take off my architect's hat in his honor - it doesn't count anyway.
Architect Dr. Ami Ran
בניית אתרי אינטרנט