January 5, 2004

Images Courtesy Preston Scott Cohen

Preston Scott Cohen, a Boston-based architect and Associate Professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, has won the Herta and Paul Amir Competition for a new building at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

The existing museum, designed by Dan Eytan and Itzhak Yashar, is located in central Tel Aviv. Inaugurated in 1971, the brutalist building, which welcomes almost half a million visitors a year, does not have enough space to display the museum’s vast collection of Israeli art nor a dedicated space for exhibits on architecture and design.
The program for the addition included large flexible gallery spaces, auditorium, restaurant, library, storage, restoration labs, administrative areas, and an education wing. The competition consisted of two stages. The first stage was anonymous and open to architects legally registered in Israel, with at least five years of practical experience. From the 77 entries, four were eventually selected. Five international firms were invited to participate in the second stage – Gigon-Guyer Architects, Zurich; Preston Scott Cohen, Boston; Sanaa Ltd., Tokyo; and two Israeli offices: Ada Karmi-Melamede & Ram Karmi Architects and Chayutin Architects, both from Tel Aviv – as well as the four finalists from stage one.

Cohen says that he was "completely surprised" when he received the letter, in November 2002, inviting him to participate in the competition. "My sense is that the architecture and design curator – Meira Yagid – wanted to explore some different perspectives."

From this pool of nine, three finalists – Cohen, Ada Karmi-Melamede and Ram Karmi, Yehoshua Gutman and Lluis Ortega i Cerda – were selected and asked to refine their schemes. On July 8, Preston Scott Cohen was chosen as the winner.

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Cohen describes the project as being, first and foremost, about "overcoming odds." Fitting the desired neutral rectangular galleries onto the "clamorous geometries" of the triangular site, while avoiding a confrontation with the orthogonal forms of the existing museum, posed the first problem. Second, in order to build a 247,000-square-foot building on an 38,000-square-foot site (with a stipulation not to exceed the 38-foot height of the existing building), much of the program had to be located underground. Cohen’s solution, formed by subtly twisting geometric forms, unifies the new building with the site. A vast, light-filled atrium at the center brings light into the deepest parts of the building. The kinetic forms of the exterior volume and interior light well at once determine, and are determined by, the disparate angles of the rectangular galleries and the triangular site configuration.

Cohen is widely known for his innovative ideas on the relationship between architecture and geometry; he compares this project to some of his research into the Sacristy of San Carlo ai Catanari, a 17th-Century Roman sacristy where the interior space is embedded behind a façade with which it is in conflict. "It is a light source that becomes the protagonist in terms of resolving the relationship between the interior and the exterior," he explains. "I’ve used light to resolve a similar tension in my solution for the new museum."

"My life’s work has been an exploration of architecture that deals with difficult conditions in ways that result in virtuosic new forms. I think this idea of overcoming difficulty was particularly important for this site and also happened to resonate with the Israelis," says Cohen.

Clad in pre-cast concrete panels, finished to look like the stone that covers parts of the existing building, the new building will be linked to the existing by a connector surrounded by gardens. Each building will have its own entry.

The City of Tel Aviv/Yafo has committed almost half of the $45 million budget for the project. Cohen is currently interviewing local architects for the project and expects to select on in March. Design development is expected to begin this summer.

By Elizabeth Harrison Kubany