National Library in Israel (Competition, 1st Prize)

Jerusalem, Israel. 2012

Our proposal for the National Library combines Knowledge and Landscape into a single structure. Rather than designing another free-standing object building to compete with the adjacent national monuments - the Knesset, The Supreme Court, and the other government buildings - our proposal conceives the National Library as a landscape, a foundation of stone steps which ascents the bed-rock and resonates with the terraced hills of the city.

The National Library is fully integrated into the surrounding heights, allowing a continuous field of movement throughout its exterior and interior spaces. It upholds the Information Age dictum that knowledge be a field of interaction rather than an object of control and containment yet roots that field in the very landscape of Jerusalem.

Design Collaborators: Matan Myer and Rafi Segal.