City of dreams

Jerusalem doesn't deliver as a capital city," says architect Moshe Atzmon. "Even though most of the government institutions are concentrated in a single place, they lack a common denominator and therefore it isn't surprising that the place where the people protest the government is Rabin Square, in front of the Tel Aviv municipality; that the important cultural performances are held in Caesarea; that ceremonial events are held at the National Stadium in Ramat Gan; and that what's left to Jerusalem are Independence Day and the Bible quiz."

Jerusalem's status as Israel's capital, at least from an international perspective, has never been conclusively determined. Accordingly, its boundaries remain quite fluid and vague, in the wake of changing political pressure and legal appeals. From the 1947 Partition Plan through the establishment of the state and the Six-Day War, the city's status has been discussed in various forums, with no conclusion. The topic of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, as part of the renewed diplomatic negotiations, will no doubt put the issue in the spotlight once again.

However, even architecturally speaking, Jerusalem has a weak status as a capital city. The frequent power struggles over its image have kept it from developing an identity as a representative government center.

The Jerusalem Municipality and the Architects Association initiated two urban planning competitions in an attempt to address this issue: one for the government complex, which is thinly populated and discourages pedestrians, and another for the entrance to the city, which is all asphalt, parking lots and concrete.

The Atzmon architectural firm came in first in the competition on "designing the government space." In the competition to plan the entrance to Jerusalem, the winner was Farhi-Zafrir architects.

The two contests are supposed to afford Jerusalem a new business quarter and an integrated government complex while strengthening the city's economic, social and cultural standing. The point that connects the two plans is the Prime Minister's Residence, planned to the south of the Jerusalem Conference Center (Binyanei Haouma). The winners, incidentally, hope that Ram Karmi's megalomaniacal and controversial plan for the residence will be replaced with a "more human" alternative.

An extraordinary mix

Jerusalem belongs to the small group of capital cities established in the 20th century, including Brasilia or Canberra. Unlike them, however, Jerusalem has existed for thousands of years; only its role as a modern capital is new.

Immediately after the declaration of the state, the question arose of where in Jerusalem would be the main government complex. On the advice of Arieh Sharon, then the head of the planning department, 600 dunams in the western part of the city were expropriated and a closed architects' competition was held to plan the area. The winners were Munio Weinraub-Gitai and Al Mansfeld, who proposed a government campus cut off from the city, with a dignified central avenue like in Washington and Paris, and buildings surrounded by foliage - a garden city.

In behavior all too characteristic of planning authorities, this plan went through many changes until it was finally shelved, and much land was transferred to bodies including Beit Yad Labanim and the Hilton Hotel. What remains of the original plan are the Prime Minister's Office, the Finance Ministry and the Interior Ministry, which were designed by Ossip Klarwein.

The story of the government complex in Jerusalem can be found in Zvi Efrat's book "The Israeli Project." The direct result of the lack of a clear worldview led to a government compound cut off from the city.

Moshe Atzmon addressed precisely these problems in his proposal for the government space - the establishment of a new civilian axis connecting the various players in the complex: the green of Sacher Park, the cultural space of the Israel Museum, the scientific and academic Hebrew University campus and of course the various government buildings. The new route is intended for pedestrians, from government workers to museum guests to students, and stretches from the Conference Center to the Givat Shmuel neighborhood. It will have a dignified avenue, with green terraces and waterfalls, and a commercial and cultural area with restaurants and cafes. This avenue will end at the university's entry plaza, the site of the planned National Library.

"I think the government complex suffers from too many different ideas," adds Atzmon. "There was the initial idea of a garden city, then someone decided that the Knesset needs to be the focal point, and after that Ram and Ada Karmi planned the Supreme Court thinking about all kinds of axes that never managed to connect. I think there is an extraordinary mix here of populations and uses. This is a very simple and clear plan, and it is very easy to implement."

They just want to flee

Architects Yossi Farhi and Doron Zafrir also want to implement Atzmon's "extraordinary mix" in the plan for the "City Gateway," between Herzl Avenue, Shazar Avenue, Yitzhak Rabin Boulevard and Haouma Boulevard at the city's entrance. In recent years the municipality has been seeking to separate the sacred religious center, the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock from the commercial center. The new main commercial center is in the Conference center area, alongside the bus station and the new train station.

This area is characterized mainly by heavy traffic and isolated parking. "This is a place that makes pedestrians want to flee," says Zafrir. However, under the new plan by Farhi-Zafrir, within 10 years the Conference Center will be expanded and will become the heart of a pedestrian-friendly business district, with 30-story buildings.

"All the necessary raw materials are here - public transportation, location, approval for constructing tall buildings - but the problem is that there is no street here," says Farhi. "At the entrance to the Conference Center, for example, there are lots of supporting walls that castrate the street. We are proposing Shazar Avenue be transformed into a broad urban boulevard, like the Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona or the Ku'damm in Berlin, a pleasant and comfortable place for the tens of thousands of passersby. The new train station alone will be sending 100,000 people into the area every day, and that's without taking into account the busy traffic there already."

The new Shazar Avenue would also connect Sacher Park and the Valley of the Cedars. "We know that it is right to place a vibrant urban boulevard between parks, and not another green area," adds Farhi.

The planners have also proposed a diagonal pedestrian boulevard to the west of the Conference Center, with an urban plaza surrounded by tall buildings with 300,000 square meters of office space. The new boulevard would also offer a view of the Calatrava bridge, which at the moment looks like a white elephant in the midst of fast highways.

Money and politics

The two plans, both Atzmon's and Farhi-Zafrir's, use traditional urban tools - broad streets, mixed uses, shaded areas and accessibility to public transportation - to create a city where none now exists. However, the proposals, promising as they may be, have not yet begun the process of detailed planning and permissions (which takes may years), and this does not take into consideration political pressure, future agreements that change Jerusalem's boundaries or exhausting bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, the winners are hoping that the real estate there, valued at billions of shekels, will eventually attract investors and entrepreneurs.

"When I add a quarter like this I can bring about an economic revolution in Jerusalem," says Farhi. "A plan like this solves the problem of localized and isolated construction. Take, for example, the Ayalon Mall area in Ramat Gan. This was once the city's backside, but the Bnei Brak municipality authorized a plan to build towers throughout its jurisdiction and now it is making quite a lot of money from this."

Moshe Atzmon says: "There is no doubt that in the triangle of money, politics and architecture, we appear to be ignoring the money. But these plans could lay the foundation that enables Jerusalem to forge ahead at the right moment."