32N Urban Shade

Year: 2010

32N Urban Shade explores the urban value of shade, focusing on the prime role it can play in circulation, experience and habitation of the city – as a public and civic ‘amenity’ at the Bat Yam Landscape Urbanism Biennale 2010.

Bat-Yam is overexposed, glaring and scorching. From May through October, sun exposure plays a pivotal role in the city’s daily experience and use cycles. What if shade and well tempered environments were to inform uses of outdoor spaces and future architectural developments across Bat Yam? Can form follow shade?

32N Urban Shade introduces a new temporal map of Bat Yam’s shade. 9 lenticular shade maps showing shifting shade footprints were distributed along designated walking routes, enabling pedestrians to plan their path based on shade availability by the hour of the day. In addition vertical green wall shade installations cast shade, based on their orientation offering cool stops along the way. Together the urban shade map and shade installation served to raise awareness of shade as a temporal, public and spatial amenity:

The 32N Urban Shade map renders shade as a visible urban commodity, offering performative insights into the relationship between built fabrics, cast shade and overexposure in the outdoor spaces of Bat Yam.

The vertical green shade walls, positioned in relation to the sun’s path cast shade across different times of day and offer double sided seating for solar relief and shifting orientations, following the sun. 

Partner/s:

Rebecca Sternberg, Anai Green, Joseph Jibri, Marc Frohn (FAR-frohn&rojas)