Urban Habitat - Single Site Scale Award of Excellence: Assuta Village, Tel Aviv
Moshe Tzur
Founder & Owner
Moshe Tzur Architects and Town Planners, Tel Aviv
Heritage Architecture at the Human Scale
Assuta Bauhaus Village aims to integrate into an existing urban fabric, while at the same time improve the project site and adjacent urban realm. The design reconnected the former hospital site to surrounding streets and urban activities, to the benefit of pedestrians. It lies within the city’s White City zone, which has a large concentration of Bauhaus-style buildings. In-depth preservation work of the existing buildings was carried out, converting them into residential buildings and constructing a new residential tower and public kindergarten.
The soft and hard landscaping materials are part of the concept of formal and informal areas in the plan. The informal area is characterized by free geometry, naturalistic stone paving, grass, and herbaceous vegetation, while the formal area is characterized by straight lines. The preserved buildings had all their built modifications carefully removed, exposing their original Bauhaus design. The residential tower’s delicate and elegant appearance includes two masses connected by a transparent atrium. The proportions relate to the surrounding buildings' scale and color, as it is clad in white aluminum panels and articulated openings.
The design created new, open pedestrian paths throughout, while connecting the surrounding streets and gardens. Additional open green spaces and gardens were created on the site, including a children’s playground. A public kindergarten was built in four levels of classrooms, each with its own courtyard. The basement parking was built in order to allow rain and water drainage, and to provide spaces for the public, neighboring buildings, and tenants. To allow the maximum amount of open space at the ground level, the pool and gym were placed in the basement, accessing natural daylight through cone-shaped skylights.
