אדריכלות ישראלית - גיליון 124

Architects Paint 2021 פברואר 124 אדריכלים מציירים אדריכלות ישראלית 95 אדריכלות ישראלית Architecture of Israel # 124 February 2021 94 | | | | ״ The son of a respected architect (and a fine artist), with a mother for whom art was central to her life, it was only natural for me to find myself in both areas with their inherently symbiotic relationship”. I chose architecture as a profession to continue the legacy of my father, Shimon Powsner, who designed (with others) some of the classic foundations of Israeli architecture. Among them the National Library (with Avraham Yasky, Amnon Alexandroni, and Michael and Shulamit Nadler); most of the first buildings and the entrance square at the Givat Ram Campus; the Van Leer Institute (with David Reznick) and Rabin Square (with Avraham Yasky). I’ve never formally studied art. My school was my father’s drawing as well as famous sketches by artists from various periods. In recent years, I’ve become “professional” - exhibiting my works in three exhibitions and publishing a book of my works. The advantage of drawing is that you are not confined to any restrictive reality. You are free to discover, understand, define, formulate and reformulate the world and, primarily, people. I don’t attempt to paint them as they’re supposed to be, but how they really are. Not “standard” computerized people, but people like me: sometimes sad, sometimes deformed, sometimes beautiful, ridiculous, greedy, and occasionally happy. As an architect, I have to adhere to reality. For years I’ve designed mainly public buildings – educational and sports facilities. I try to re-invent them again and again – make them more adaptable, comfortable and yes - more beautiful as well. Occasionally, the solution is not only to serve reality but also to state an opinion; to learn something more about the world, space, form, material and their relationship. In such moments, I believe, architecture becomes an art. architects paint Gidi Powsner - people and structures Rachel Ben Aharon When I am cuffed by the profession’s constraints, I feel like creating without restrictions, as in the pure, liberated world of art. When I am painting, I long for the pressures of reality whereby someone really and truly needs you. The Shell Basket Ball Stadium in Beer Sheva was actually born out of a competition for the design of a sports hall in Eilat. After winning, we prepared work plans and everything was ready for construction. But Hapoel Eilat began to decline in the league, and thus lost the chance of building their sports facility. After ten years of waiting, funding was found for a sports facility in Beer Sheva. Although bare concrete was the style I insisted on implementing, it was my steel construction that gave it its name – The Shell. Intended to serve about 4,000 spectators, the hall is not only restricted to sport events, and serves more as an auditorium for events of varying purposes and sizes, via four gates that lead into two sunken passages. Once, in order to be Prime Minister one needed khaki shorts and the angry face of someone with chronic constipation. Not many remember that Ben Gurion’s fluffy hair, conveying “see and sanctify” did not prevent him from giving back the entire Sinai Peninsula without turning a hair only a week after we conquered it in a storm that surprised even us. And when he faded away, a modest and painfully honest Begin appears just to let his Minister of Defense work on him until, overwhelmed by depression and loss, he retired, leaving us for another eighteen years of harsh schooling in Lebanon. Once, in order to scare off all the pirates in the Middle East, a black eye patch and the limp of a farmer from Nahalal was enough. And in order to be able to dictate to the orthodox, seculars and Arabs what they could eat, you had to have thick eyebrows like those of Dov Yosef, who was Minister of the Interior during Austerity, when we were sure that a sugar cube was made of gold, and that a package of margarine was a luxury. “Once there were flowers , wrote Talma Alagon, and the garden was full of fruit trees. And at twilight the kings would go out into the village to see the seagulls kiss the shore. But that was long ago and now the flower has turned to thorns, the seagull to prey, for the king is vicious and love has become a sword.” My grandmother would say that life must go on, they may have screwed with our heads, but in the end we’ll live to see a flourishing fig tree, a woman crowned with balls, or merely someone who is innocent and painfully real. On Saturday I looked at the pathetic photograph of the Party Heads – all fantasizing about the day after, but none of them had a black eye patch or fluffy hair. All shamelessly believe themselves, others beg for a chance to try, as if we were the research institute in Ness Ziona, drunk on Pfizer’s Viagra vaccine, or merely fools thirsty for a little leadership or sympathy. I wanted to tell them that we’re all sick of party “take-aways” and feel like vomiting all the tricks and shticks and lies and corruption. And although most of us bluff with the masks and don’t have enough air for another attempt, we have no other country, and this melody cannot be stopped. “I have been young and now I am old”, and the sentence “this is all there is” I have repeated innumerable times. And “I know that what I see as closed, you see open; what is a dream for me might be a nightmare for you. But without a spark of love, nothing will ignite” (written approximately by Ehud Banai). Again I look at the pathetic picture, trying to find someone who would be able to reunite our society, segmented with the political knife. And, as most of us from left and right know, it’s not the mask that blurs the glasses with steam, but rather the anger that this is not what we wished for. I am not sure what each of us sees in this picture, but “I saw a cypress in a field that withstood the storm, the khamsin and the frost and did not break. It bent his head down to the grass and rose up green and tall”. I am not sure that Ehud Manor meant the same cypress, and may the bald and the one eyed forgive me. But with all the anger, I saw at least one in that row who sacrificed his political career to make peace, and this is the kind of Prime Minister I dream of. Architect Dr. Ami Ran i saw a cypress editorial דבר העורך