This is the Har Homa settlement, a suburb of Jerusalem built during the 1990’s. It is the perfect example of an attempt to imitate the complex form of the traditional hill town without employing any of the same processes. As a result the repetition of shapes at the scale of buildings gives away the production process as a type II physical phenomenon and not a complex living environment. Who could truly love it?
To quote James Howard Kunstler, in a region where his words have a much more urgent significance, will this be a place worth defending?
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2 responses so far ↓
Mackenzie Keast // January 18, 2009 at 10:10 pm |
Great post. It’s funny to see developers try to imitate organic settlements yet fail so miserably. Suburban residential developments in North America try to do the same thing, really – curvilinear streetstrying to imatate organic growth, as if housing has naturally grown up along some old and winding farm road.
Design through the manufactured process can’t imitate the design of natural process. It is the process which must form the deisgn, not the other way around, I think.
Mohamad A. Chakaki // January 25, 2009 at 5:01 am |
really glad to see this post, Mathieu! i’ve been fascinated by this issue recently… of ‘how they build in Palestine.’ both b/c of current events in the region (i.e. Gaza) and b/c of a book i think you and your blog followers would be interested in:
“Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation”, by Eyal Weizmann.
peace
mohamad