Client Holon Municipality
Location Holon, Israel
Size Gross Area 4100m², Net 3200m²
Team Ron Arad (Principal Designer), Asa Bruno (Project Architect), James
Foster.
Client Representative Hannah Hertzman (General Director, Holon Municipality)
Project Director (Client) Jacob Eben (General Director Holon Municipality
Development Corporation Ltd.)
Executive Arch. (Israel) Sharon Ben-Shem, Waxman-Govrin Eng. Ltd (WG)
Project Management (Israel) (Waxman Govrin Eng. Ltd.)
Structural Engineer Uri Harmel (Harmel Engineering Ltd.)
Lighting Designer , Noa Lev and Ran Troim (RTLD)
Landscape Architects TeMA Landscape Arch. Tel Aviv
Early in 2003, Ron Arad Associates were invited by the Municipality of Holon,
Israel to design and develop the first national Design Museum to be situated in a
recently developed area of the city of Holon designated to become a new cultural
and educational hub for central Israel, a few miles south of Tel Aviv.
The City of Holon’s municipality has, over the past several years, been
energetically investing in the development of Holon’s cultural identity and impact
on a national level, and as part of a series of urban development projects,
identified the potential for creating the first Israeli museum dedicated to design.
The municipality commissioned RAA to design a museum, which is to be of an
international standard, and with the important role of promoting the appreciation
of design in Israel, and of Israeli design both in Israel and abroad. The proposed
design was presented to and approved by the Holon Municipality in February
2005.
The Design Museum Holon (DMH) project faces the challenge of successfully
catering to a diverse range of visitor type, from school children and pupils in
educational institutions, to industrial bodies, design professionals, and the
general museum-going public. It is to become the national platform for the
presentation of design, the creation of a significant exhibit collection, the
reflection of Israeli design in the context of world design and the endorsement of
the importance of design in a young emerging state.
The site designated for the museum occupies a 3,700m² (net area) lot, orientated
in a more or less rectangular arrangement on the east-west axis, and is flanked
on the eastern side by Hankin Avenue –one of Holon’s main north-south arteries.
The site’s prime north aspect faces a large new public plaza which forms the
courtyard to the adjacent recently built Mediateque complex. The western flank of
the site borders the Mediateque's dedicated access road and car park, and the
south flank borders an empty site currently designated for future housing
development.
From a very early stage in the Museum’s design development process, it was
envisaged that two prime gallery spaces would encompass its main exhibition
facility, and take the form of two independent architectural entities. The relation
between the two wings that contain these galleries would inscribe the Museum’s
circulation arteries and define the arrangement of its various other facilities, such
as the educational wing, staff, office, and visitor facilities.
The generous public plaza to the north of the site was naturally conceived of as
an appropriate introductory public space and entrance route to the Museum. The
gentle plateau-like topography of the site was to be articulated by the
arrangement of the museum facilities over 2 staggered levels, connected by a
main circulation route, in the form of a sculptural ramp. In this way, the route
through the museum becomes more experiential, prolonged and meaningful, as it
leads the visitor through a series of dramatic internal views across the Museum’s
own internal courtyard situated in the zone between the two wings.
The notion of creating and exploiting the tension between an internal
arrangement of efficient box-like spaces, and the dynamic and curvaceous
external envelope, became the guiding design principle for the entire museum.
The greater part of the museum’s external appearance (from all but the south
façade) is shrouded by five dominant bands of weathering-steel (Corten)
structure which undulate and meander their way in, out and around the museum’s
internal volumes, at times in unison, at others apart; at times enclosing space,
and at times notionally defining it.
The Corten bands act as a spine for the building - both supporting it structurally
and dictating its posture in relation to its surroundings. The horizontality of the
bands layout is further accentuated by a gradation of chemically accelerated
patinas and the subsequent weathering of the steel over the lifetime of the
building, both of which echo the topographic character of the open Israeli terrain
in the urban context.
As the structural bands encircle the Museum’s west wing and reach the inner
courtyard, they begin to splay apart and project vertically beyond the upper edge
of the first floor main gallery, spanning the entire plaza in mid-air, only to re-unite
over the circulation ramp and proceed to frame the main gallery and support it at
a 7-metre height over the ground below. The bands’ apparent acrobatics serve to
provide partial shading and notional enclosure across the inner courtyard during
the hottest hours of the day.
The Museum’s two prime galleries provide a polar and diverse canvas for
curatorial activity – the main 500m² gallery will harness Israel’s consistent natural
lighting potential and be lit via a “corduroy” of light reflectors in the ceiling, and the
smaller 200m² gallery will provide a carte blanche box – allowing for both
intimacy, and flexibility. Additional exhibition opportunities will be provided along
the Museum’s circulation routes (two additional 'mini-galleries'), and in the
external spaces encompassed by the bronze bands.
The diversity of the Museum’s user groups is addressed by a range of circulation
routes which in turn respond to the curving steel bands. While the circulation
routes and the bands at times depart from one another, the bands are never
entirely obscured from the visitor’s sight, and act as a visual key to one’s position
within the museum.
The Museum’s north façade provides a wide protected opening under the
overhanging first floor gallery, which serves as a catchment area for visitors and
staff arriving either from the north plaza, or from the western car park / drop-off
area. A gently landscaped slope leads visitors through an amphi-theatrical
staircase which accompanies the main access into the museum complex. To the
left, the cedar-clad facade of the Museum Café spills onto the wide stairs against
the backdrop of the sunlit inner courtyard behind. The generous 360m² internal
courtyard provides the first glimpse of the museum’s internal character, as the
bands above separate to allow sunshine through, and visitors can gather and
walk around this majestic open-air exhibition space. The museum’s main
entrance is situated to the right (western side of courtyard), where a glazed set of
double-doors invites the visitors into the west wing.
Construction began in August 2006, and the Design Museum is due to open to
the public in September 2009.
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