City Centre of Ramat HaSharon

Ramat HaSharon, Israel, 1984-1986

The town of Ramat HaSharon is situated eight kilometers north of Tel Aviv. Once an agricultural community, it lost much of its pastoral countryside to become a suburban satellite town. The local municipal authorities, concerned with losing the town's identity, became more open to non-stereotyped design. Not enough however to accept my design.

I believe that only beauty endures. The Greeks toiled for two hundred years, perfecting the proportion of their columns, to make their ruins so beautiful. It took more than two hundred years for Albert Einstein to demolish the great edifice built by Isaac Newton. Its ruins, if not of timeless validity, are nevertheless of great beauty.

The Gozo Citadel at Ferrara, as an isolated fortress, became the center of a large sunflower, radiating its spirals over the entire design.

The Emancipation of Form
One of the most important objectives of a design process is to free the design from known stereotypes and personal preferences. The result should look as if we were never involved in its creation.

At a party in a posh villa in Herzliya, a completely drunk friend of mine, artist Yigal Tumarkin, approached Philip Johnson, then on a visit in Israel, with a straightforward declaration: "Mr, Johnson, you are such a shit of an architect." "I completely agree with you, Mr. Tumarkin," was Philip Johnson's unembarrassed response.