Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen, photo: Amit Geron
In an attempt to ‘square the triangle’, or the triangular building plot to be more specific, the American architectural practice of Preston Scott Cohen have developed this multifaceted, perspective-distorting Herta and Paul Amir Building for the complex of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Designed to comprise several storeys of spacious, rectangular exhibition rooms within ‘a tight, idiosyncratic, triangular site’, the 18500-square-meters building is now a home to a vast collection of Israeli art as well as multiple architecture, design, drawings and prints galleries, a study centre, a library and an auditorium.
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen, photo: Amit Geron
The twisting, gleaming-white building encompasses five structurally independent levels which have been constructed at varying axes and ‘stacked one on top of the other’ with 25-meters-high spiralling ‘Lightfall’ atrium unifying and connecting these otherwise disparate galleries.
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen, photo: Amit Geron
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen, photo: Amit Geron
More about the building:
‘Conceptually, the Amir Building is related to the Museum’s Brutalist main building (completed 1971; Dan Eytan, architect). At the same time, it also relates to the larger tradition of Modern architecture in Tel Aviv, as seen in the multiple vocabularies of Mendelsohn, the Bauhaus and the White City. The gleaming white parabolas of the façade are composed of 465 differently shaped flat panels made of pre-cast reinforced concrete.’
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen, photo: Amit Geron
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen, photo: Amit Geron
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen, photo: Amit Geron
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen - the opening night
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen - the opening night
Herta and Paul Amir Building by Preston Scott Cohen - the site plan
to Preston Scott Cohen’s website
