‘Holon Civic Green Block’ integrates municipal offices, a music school, co-working spaces, and student housing, serving as a mixed-use complex that operates at both the scale of its individual buildings and as an urban block, fostering a new civic dimension for Holon.
Context and connections: Holon is at an urban crossroads. The city is transitioning from a continuous, mid-rise fabric to over-scaled housing developments that are unraveling the neighborhood blocks. Our proposal engages this reality, introducing a new municipal block capable of bridging between Holon’s existing and future-scaled developments. By operating at once at the scale of the super-block, building, and interstitial civic spaces, the project aims to heighten the density and intensity of uses on the site through new programmatic and spatial relations.
Program and uses: The porous block erases any distinction between the project’s ‘front’ and ‘back.’ Municipal functions are situated on the northern edge of the block; short-to-mid-term occupancy dormitories are located across existing residential buildings to the west; the auditorium and music school are located to the south, across from the design museum; and offices are located to the east.
The shared open and civic spaces promote formal and informal interactions and uses, inside and out. Residents coming to pay bills, a jazz session spilling out of the music school, a municipal employee grabbing a bite to eat with a resident artist, a group of museum visitors catching a glimpse of a dance production on their way out.
Materials and ecological logic: Holon Municipal Block’s formal and material logic is designed to address hot, humid climate conditions. Natural ventilation and cooling are heightened by capturing east-west air circulation, while the spacing of the built volumes casts shade on the block’s interior to cool the open spaces.
A double-skin infill system with perforated aluminum, bougainvillea, and media projection screens wraps the perimeter of the block, creating shifting conditions responsive to changes in program, context, and degrees of solar protection.
