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Between wilderness and arcadia By Esther Zandberg Tags: architecture, Israel News  "There is poetry in the arid landscape," writes landscape architect Shlomo Aronson in his new book "Aridscapes: Desiging in Harsh and Fragile Lands," published this month in a bilingual English/Spanish edition (by Editorial Gustavo Gili), and soon to appear in Hebrew. "After 40 years of working in landscape architecture in an arid zone, my respect and love for this climate has grown, rather than diminished. With all its hardships and stresses, with that quality of always being 'on the edge,' with all its difficulties, I have come to value its virtues." The sensitive, harsh landscapes that lie, as he puts it, on the seam between the wilderness and arcadia - this is where he feels most at home. "Aridscapes" seeks to put these landscapes and their fate on the public agenda, calling on us to live with the desert rather than attempt to conquer it. Aronson believes that landscape architects bear "a heavy responsibility for providing sustainable planning, in order to preserve the fragile ecological balance. We see what is happening in Abu Dhabi, which is trampling the desert without any compunction. We ourselves are threatened by the planned canal between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, and the real estate projects around it. Abu Dhabi is just around the corner. The book intends to serve as a warning against our becoming a second Abu Dhabi." Aronson, 71, is Israel's most prominent landscape architect, and one of the country's second generation of such professionals. His philosophy and extensive work are responsible for spearheading an ideological and visual revolution in local landscape architecture: from the Zionist ideal of verdant gardens, to a locally based ideal of what he calls the "arid garden." Behind the change also lies new ecological awareness of local conditions and of the need to preserve land and water, along with a longing for "making peace with the land" - the title of a book he wrote about his work, a decade ago. Advertisement For 40 years now, Aronson has been involved in large-scale landscape design and urban planning in public spaces ("Designing private gardens never interested me," he says). These include the road along the Dead Sea and the park abutting the Old City walls in East Jerusalem, which he designed early in his career; National Master Plan (NMP) No. 35 - in which he helped develop the concept of "an all-inclusive view of the landscape" ("michloley nof"); NMP No. 22 (the national afforestation plan); the rehabilitation of the phosphate quarries at Nahal Zin; the Sapir Park in the Negev; the Sha'ar Hagai interchange - one of his foremost successes - the Sherover Promenade in Jerusalem; the Suzanne Dellal plaza in Neve Tzedek; Ben-Gurion University's Kreitman Square; and the list goes on. Lessons in design Nature in our region has never been completely natural, and "the ideal of Mediterranean landscape is a man-made landscape," he says, adding that years ago he reached the conclusion that, "in our times, only a small part of humanity will know nature in its wild state. Urban man will meet nature only as a part of culture, and as a part that was designed and is maintained by humans." The Mediterranean clime and landscape, it turns out, are not unique to the Mediterranean basin; they can also be found in California, parts of Chile, the cape area of South Africa and parts of Australia. These are unique landscapes, Aronson explains, characterized by a short rainy season and a long, dry summer. This landscape has always been poised in a delicate balance between, on the one hand, natural phenomena and processes, and, on the other, human needs. All this "makes the area especially fragile," today more than ever, because of global warming. Is there reason to panic? Aronson: "In recent years I started feeling anxious that we are walking an increasingly narrow tightrope. A few weeks ago I listened to a speech by would-be U.S. vice president Sarah Palin. I heard her say openly: Dig, dig, to procure more and more oil. I understood that if they [the Republicans] win the elections, much of what the environmental groups have accomplished will vanish. And here we are talking about enormous things, compared to which everything our nature protection society deals with is a joke." Your work often arouses the opposition of environmental groups for allegedly damaging nature. Are landscape architects "green"? "Landscape architects are part of the development project; they work for the establishment. Often we are on the other side of the fence from the green groups, which oppose our work. But I believe that today, landscape architects have a responsibility to shape the landscape in a way that won't harm the delicate balance in the world in general, and in desert areas in particular. If our actions harm the world, I believe it is also in our power to keep the world the way we would like it to remain." Aronson was born in Haifa in 1936 and studied landscape design at Berkeley and at Harvard, where he received a master's degree. Aronson returned to Israel, in 1968, with a high degree of professional skill and a romantic-colonial attitude toward the Orient. After graduating he worked for renowned Jewish-American landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, whom he considers his mentor. In the introduction to "Aridscapes," Halprin writes that Aronson internalized the ideas of "living lightly on the land," and upon his return to Israeli, applied this knowledge and the tools, which are part of "a responsible approach to every region in which we live. Such wisdom is needed now, more than ever." He set up shop in Jerusalem: "It was clear to me that this was the only place where I could live in Israel. I am a Jerusalem architect, and the work my office does is both Israeli and connected to Jerusalem. It is by virtue of my Jerusalem-ness that I define my work here. I came to Jerusalem at a turbulent, frenzied time, and as a landscape architect I had to grapple with 2,000 years of history. In those days, everything was colored in the hues of Jerusalem and the postwar euphoria. When we planned something, there was no authority to double-check what we did, and there was a fear: What if we made a mistake? When we planned the park around the [Old City] walls, I didn't sleep at night, I was so anxious." And did you make mistakes? "My generation was awarded both the curse and the blessing of an unlimited mandate from the state, and what good and bad we did here is the result of that free hand. We believed that we got our license to act straight from the 'minister of history,' not merely from the establishment or from the board of some corporation. We had the exhilarating sense that we could do anything. We had much more freedom than people in similar positions in the United States. Did we get too much power? Was it audacious of us to make such fateful decisions without going through the excruciating process of encountering opposition by environmental groups and the public? Who gave us the right to do all that? This is now the major question." Spreading civilization Aronson lives and works in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem neighborhood. In 1948, its oriental ambience and homes, which had belonged to Arab residents who were forced to flee, attracted many artists and architects. The architect's son and daughter-in-law, landscape architects Itay and Barbara Aronson, also work in his firm. Their offices offer a picturesque view - a view that is similar to the "celestial Jerusalem" of Renaissance paintings and tourist postcards, which represses troubling memories, conflict and clashes. Even the dust of the construction work on the light rail system, which is tearing up the real Jerusalem, is nowhere to be seen, because of the extensive - perhaps too extensive - use of stone and olive trees, veritable groves of them. Don't you find the political baggage attached today to stone and olives a burden? "Stone is the natural building material in areas where geology is overly present, such as here, and it was used by farmers and kings for generations. When I used stone at the Suzanne Dellal center I thought of Aharon Chelouche and told myself that in his honor, we would not do it in a slapdash way, but make it respectable, just right. When I plant olive trees some are horrified, but I think far beyond the immediate Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To me, the olive can be a bridge between cultures and conflicts. Practically speaking, it is the only Land of Israel tree that can survive with almost no water, and that, too, is a symbol." In "Aridscapes," Aronson deals at length with the subject of water in arid areas, noting that in our modern and technological era, just as in ancient times, civilization only reaches as far as the water does. Millennia-old water-collection and irrigation systems have been discovered almost all over the world - especially in desert and Mediterranean regions, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Negev, Yemen - and were a central factor in the flourishing of ancient cultures. Modern water technologies continue to play a key role in the spread of civilization to arid and semi-arid regions, but they also threaten its existence. "Los Angeles could not exist in its current form without drawing water daily from the Colorado River," the architect explains. "Whether doing so is good or bad remains an open, burning question." In both his book and work, he calls for the preservation of traditional agriculture and its use in parks, city gardens, interchanges and roads. Such vegetation requires little water or maintenance, he claims; it also tones down the overly vivid color of contemporary Israeli flora and changes with the seasons, a near-forgotten natural phenomenon. Like many others in his profession, Aronson often tries - too little and too late - to minimize the damage incurred by planning decisions over which he had no control. One recent example is the expansion of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, a project that his office is now working on for the Public Works Authority. It is still at the planning stage, and details could not be published here. But from what is known, it is clear that if the project is realized, a lovely, iconic postcard landscape will disappear, replaced by a highway with multiple interchanges, much earthwork, supporting walls and tunnels. And all that, in the end, for nothing: As long as there is no fast train between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the expanded highway will soon become clogged as well, to the regret of current and future drivers. It is a great irony that you went to such efforts to keep the Sha'ar Hagai interchange from damaging the approach to Jerusalem, and now the entire road will be ruined. Yours is an accomplished and well-known practice. Shouldn't you have led the public outcry against this vandalism? Barbara Aronson: "All parties involved agree that the highway needs to be widened, and we at our office are doing everything to minimize the geometry and the impact of the highway on the environment. We are not touching the slopes and will not build supporting walls as an aesthetic tool." Shlomo Aronson: "Architects don't lead protests. I believe that there is a chance to make something better here than is usually the case. I once resigned from designing a new bridge for the train to Be'er Sheva, adjacent to the beautiful Turkish bridge, because I thought it seriously harmed a historic monument. And what happened? Someone else ended up planning the bridge, and the result is catastrophic." That's a well-worn excuse. "In retrospect, I think that if we had stayed and planned the Be'er Sheva bridge, we could have minimized the damage and created a better project than what was accomplished. It may be naive of me, but as Israel's senior landscape architect today, I feel responsible for what happens here." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Hitting Hezbollah Iraqi site reports Nasrallah was poisoned last week and Iranian doctors saved him. Terror as support Al-Qaida-linked Web site supports McCain for president by means of welcoming terror.

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