Shirly Kujawski Kenett

The Yad Sarah foundation was established in the 1970’s in Jerusalem. The foundation provides varied residential and community based assistance to those in need, either on a temporary or permanent basis. This, via a humane and caring attitude. The design process was based on the foundation’s vision. We aimed to design a building that encapsulated a private, warm, supporting atmosphere while retaining a strong connection to its surrounding community. The building scheme was established by three levels of privacy: A public level near the street that contains commercial functions; A private level for a rehabilitation hotel in the upper floors and a between level that contains supportive functions that will allow healthy people and tenants to meet. The spaces program (32,000 sqm.) and building’s height (54 m) that was written in the urban plan dictated a revised and deep investigation in the architectural meaning against the foundation’s values – “human” and “community”. We split the big mass into small volumes that gave us small houses, more opportunities for meetings, human scale and mainly a place for people. The building contains two vertical cores that split it into two functions and allows privacy to the upper floors and connections to street to the public areas. The grid of the building and the facades was designed in a flexible way to enable further functions in the future such as offices. Disassembly the big mass gave us a lot of covered and uncovered roof areas that we designed as outdoor spaces which allow natural light and fresh air to penetrate the indoor spaces. These outdoor spaces can be filled with vegetation that is known as therapeutic and serve as an accelerator for health.