The battle over Kikar Hamedina

Six Israeli and foreign architectural firms are competing for the planning of Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina circle: Yasky-Sivan, Moshe Zur, Man-Shinar, Rothman-Raz, Kolker-Epstein, in conjunction with Jack Diamond from the United States and Jean Nouvel of France. The competition was the brainchild of economist David Cohen, who chairs the committee representing most of the plaza's landowners.

The Israeli competitors are among the most senior, experienced and well-known architects in the local community. Nouvel is an international superstar. Among his famous works is the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Diamond was a partner in the planning of Jerusalem's City Hall.

The architects are currently hard at work on the finishing touches of their proposals, all of which will be based on the municipal building plan that was approved some 18 months ago by Tel Aviv's Regional Committee for Planning and Building. (Plan 2500).

In September the proposals will be presented to the landowners, who will choose the winning plan. The next step, Cohen hopes, will be the granting of a building permit. After that, he says, "We will start to build." If that is the case, in another two months we might find out if this is the final chapter in the never-ending saga of the planning of the plaza, or just another twist along the road, whether the project will be a lamentation for generations (as many fear), or whether it will be "something that people will come from all over the world to see," as Cohen hopes.

Cohen is a second-generation owner of a plot of land in the circle, and owns 1.5 percent of it. He has been involved with the planning of the circle since the first plan in 1951 - a plan prepared by Elhanani-Lotan, and which won a competition but was shelved. After that a series of plans came and went, including one to cancel all construction plans and turn the circle into a park. All the plans met with opposition, mostly from the established and well-connected residents in the surrounding area.

The plans stirred up public storms, professional and personal disputes, were discussed in sessions of the Knesset, and prompted law suits and petitions to the High Court of Justice. The approved plan had been prepared in 1984 by a team of architects at the Tel Aviv Municipality, among them Danny Kaiser, currently city engineer. The 1984 plan replaced plan 600 from 1964, which had been prepared by Oscar Nemeyer of Brazil (in conjunction with Elhanani-Lotan). The current proposes 387 apartments, to be built in three pairs of towers 23 stories tall, a shopping center, a public building, an underground parking lot and a public park. Jabotinsky St. will go under the circle. This plan was prepared and approved after the intervention of the High Court of Justice.

"At no stage over [the past] 50 years," says Cohen, "were the landowners ever included in the preparation of the plans, and we were never fully informed of what was happening, as if we were not a party to the matter."

Five years ago Cohen initiated the organization of the landowners in order to promote the approval of a municipal building plan for the circle. Most of the landowners joined the organization and a committee was chosen, with Cohen as the chair. After the approval of the plan, the committee hired the services of a technical firm (Waxman-Govrin) for consultations on the final planning of the circle, based on the principles of the municipal building plan.

"I started with coordination and supervision - and not with architecture," explains Cohen, "because I did not want there to be any outside pressures. Until now every city engineer has treated the circle as if he were an architect with a frustrated ego." Cohen believes that this time such behavior will work in his favor and that "Kaiser the city engineer will not be able to oppose a plan by Kaiser the planner."

The first stage of the competition for the planning of the circle involved 50 contestants, from whom 16 advanced to the second stage, and then six were chosen for the final stage. Among the criteria for choosing were the size of the firm, its experience in urban planning, in planning complex facilities that included residential and commercial space, and experience in high-rise construction. The contest is not a planning competition in the traditional sense that does not obligate a private entrepreneur, and the panel of judges will not include any architects.

"All the architects are interested parties," explains Cohen. "The real test will be whether our technical advisors determine that the winning plan meets the technical requirements and if we, the landowners, fall in love with it. I believe that if there will be such a plan, it will not be hard to recognize." The six contestants will each receive $20,000, which is intended, says Cohen, "mainly for the purchase of the rights to the plans, and so that the planners won't bother us afterward." There is no doubt that Cohen's involvement opens a peephole to the other side of the curtain to the world of planning and architecture.

Cohen, who shows a great interest in architecture, says that the ultimate test that the plan has to pass is the "Bilbao test." The Guggenheim museum that architect Frank Gehry designed in Bilbao, Spain, has already become the litmus test for what has been conceived by the public as a stunning economic-architectural success. "Two million tourists come to visit the Bilboa museum every year," says Cohen. "Why should they not come to see Kikar Hamedina?"

Cohen admits that the works of most of the architects that he invited are not pilgrimage sites except, perhaps, for those of Nouvel's. "But I can't disqualify Israeli architects right from the start. I have no prejudice. We just want to do something nice. We want to make an effort."

Cohen is willing to absorb the difference in the cost of such planning and what he calls "mediocre planning." That difference, he says, will be 5 percent at most. Judging from the cost of building the works of Gehry and Nouvel, and the fees they charge, that is an optimistic estimate.

It seems that the enormity of the project facing the competitors is not measured in money alone. The real obstacle is the confining framework of the municipal building plan, which many showered with that greatest of compliments, "the best of a bad lot."

"It is heartrending," said architect Yossi Farhi, a former planner for the Tel Aviv region at the Interior Ministry, when he signed the plans 18 months ago. The main incentive for the approval of the plan was not necessarily the quality of the plan but rather the fear of a massive suit by the landowners against the city if it again rejected the plan. Even Kaiser himself said that sometimes there is no choice but to decide in favor of an inferior plan.

The strict principles of the municipal building plan leave practically no room for creativity or the possibility of extricating themselves from the shortcomings of the concept. The most prominent drawback of the plan is the complete separation of the raised circle from its surroundings and the threat to the urban character of Jabotinsky Street, which will become an underground tunnel, and Hey B'iyar street; they will be turned from streets into main roads.

The greatest freedom of expression for the architects is in the design of the residential towers. It can be assumed that the familiar image of the three "triumphal arches" in the circle will be changed, though not by much, because their location cannot be altered. "Triumphal arches in the circle - over my dead body," says Cohen.

The planners will undoubtedly have to be acrobats in order to stick to the municipal building plan while at the same time digressing from it.

Cohen still favors the Nemeyer-Elhanani-Lotan plan from the 1960s, though this may be due to his enthusiasm for it in his youth. That plan called for a perimeter circle of three 11-story buildings with a tower (or three, depending on whom you ask) in the center. That plan was the most urbane of all and was a clear architectural statement, but it also met with the strongest opposition. It is probably what caused the delay of the planning process to this day.

Cohen was given the opportunity to reminisce over that plan when he was invited two weeks ago to a discussion of the final projects of architecture students at the Technion in Haifa. One of the projects, by Ariel Blonder and Ido Zamir, proposed a return to the idea of a ring of buildings in the circle, but this time on pillars five stories above street level.

This fanciful proposal is enchanting, but does not jive with the approved municipal building plan. Cohen was enthusiastic, but the thought that something could delay construction in the circle even more - even if it were the very best plan - brought him back to reality. Any alteration of the municipal building plan is a matter that could take years, if not generations.

When the final plan for Kikar Hamedina is chosen, we will find out which of the alternatives is better - the foot-dragging or moving forward.

	The final project of Technion architecture students Ariel Blonder and Ido Zamir.
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