Last update - 00:00 20/12/2006
Death of a fiercely independent voice
By Esther Zandberg
Architect David Yanai died on Saturday at the age of 71. He was laid to rest on Monday at the Yarkon Cemetery.
Yanai was born in Jerusalem and was a graduate of the architecture faculty at the Technion-Institute of Technology, Haifa, where he also taught for more than 40 years until his retirement about three years ago. His work was not part of the architectural mainstream and for the most part remained on paper. He was a controversial figure who aroused polarized reactions.
Alongside his work he always struggled, fought, sounded the alarm, came out against some issue or filed suit, whether in the professional, public or personal realm. The outstanding buildings he planned are located in Haifa, where he lived for decades until his death: the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute, which "dabbles it feet in the water," as architect Ram Karmi described it and Beit Halohem on the Carmel in Haifa, "which displays with impressive virtuosity in geometric combinations," as architect Abba Elhanani wrote of it.
Beit Halohem became famous among the general public and in the media primarily because of its connection to a corruption scandal in its construction that Yanai exposed.
Also on the list of Yanai's works are a sports center and a residential neighborhood at Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael, a residential neighborhood at Kibbutz Ein Gev and private homes in Ein Hod, Haifa and Timrat. Among the buildings on paper are developments of ideas or proposals for many planning competitions. These are more ambitious than the buildings that were built and aspire to solutions to almost any issue in the area of planning. For the most part these are not isolated objects but rather geometric systems or superstructures made up of "elementary parts" that develop according to a "genetic code," as he defined it.
The ideas that Yanai propounded are connected to schools of architecture that emerged in Europe and Japan after World War II as criticism of the "classical" modern movement and were inspired by contemporary innovations in the mathematical sciences, anthropology and the industrialization of construction. These ideas, too, remained more on paper than in reality and have remained a fascinating chapter in history, which is now a subject for research and the drawing of conclusions. In Israel, Yanai was close to the works of the late Alfred Neumann and Eldar Sharon, and architect Zvi Hecker.
In his work Yanai rejected outright the dealing with form for its own sake and refused to talk about "beauty" in architecture or, heaven forbid, "fashion." In an interview with him several years ago, he related proudly that, as a student, he never entered the faculty's library, and that he consistently refrained from reading the professional literature and looking at architecture journals. "Architecture isn't a fashion magazine," he said, "and it is impossible to turn a page." Architecture, as he believed, "doesn't have aesthetic achievements apart from the results of understanding the comprehensive complex."
Although he engaged in teaching architecture at the Technion for many years, Yanai was never chosen to serve as dean and was never awarded the rank of professor. The reasons are varied, but for the most part are connected to "human relations," as his colleagues note. An exhibition of Yanai's works was held in 2003 at the gallery for experimental art at the Technion and at the gallery of the Architects' Association in Jaffa, and was received with acclaim and surprise even by veteran colleagues (and rivals).
The exhibition was also shown at the Museum of Science and Architecture in Moscow and aroused a similar reaction. The warm responses provided a moment of pleasure and something of a compensation for the frustration that accompanied him all his life, according to his companion of recent decades, Daniela Gerzulin, a lawyer and his partner in legal battles.
In recent years, Yanai was engaged in gathering all his works into a comprehensive catalogue book to represent, as he said, "a methodological continuum of research and questioning, and to indicate possibilities for better and more important architecture." His partner in the preparation of the catalogue at the TAM office that he established in the 1960s, architect Gad Politi, says that the book is "a life's work that wasn't completed."