Designed by Irad Shomroni and Josef Shushan, the proposal for the Yad Le’Banim Building – Cultural and Memorial Center seeks to emphasize the duality between everyday life activities and commemoration. In a center that houses both cultural communal facilities that open daily and annual memorial ceremonies for casualties of war, the center is designed as a linear path. It gradually rises from Ramat Yishay’s main street, hovers above its surrounding garden, and eventually reaches a viewpoint towards the historical buildings of Ramat Yishay. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Yad Le’Banim center is to be situated at the entrance of Ramat Yishay, A town in northern Israel with strong local identity and rich community life. It did not seemed right to create at this site a closed indoor compound, but rather a semi open center. This center invites residents to take part in different community activities held in varied indoor and outdoor spaces. For this reason, it was important to create a sense of an open and inviting garden at the site. Several measures were taken to achieve this – minimal imprint of the built mass, preservation of the existing trees on site, free movement towards and from the site.
