The Deichmann square by Chyutin Architects
Chyutin Architects designed a landscaped square at Ben-Gurion University in Beer sheba, Israel.
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The Deichmann Square by Chyutin Architects
The Deichmann square and the Negev Gallery constitute a link between Ben-Gurion University campus and the city of Be’er Sheva.
The square serves as an entrance gate to the western side of the campus, surrounded by existing buildings and the future Negev Gallery. The square offers an outdoor space for cultural and social activities for students and for the city population.
The square is bordered by the elongated structure of the gallery facing both the city and the campus. Towards the city, the gallery’s continuous façade (160 meter in length) unifies the heterogeneous appearance of the existing buildings behind the gallery into a cohesive urban unit. The city façade is accompanied by a sculpture garden creating a green edge to the campus. The two story high monolithic body of exposed concrete emerges from lawny topography of the northern part of the campus and hovers above an entrance courtyard in the southern part, where it appears to be leaping towards the urban space.
The gallery hosts exhibition spaces, museology faculty, workshops and auditorium contributing to the outdoor activities on Deichmann Square. Since the square was designated to accommodate intensive congregation of youth and students, the preferred solution was to allocate limited areas for vegetation. The design of the square with various elements of exposed concrete connects the surrounding buildings both physically and visually, accentuating their common features.
The square appears as a carpet of integrated strips of concrete paving, vegetation and lighting with concrete benches and trees scattered randomly. The strips of vegetation consist of lawn, Equisetopsida and seasonal plants.
Visit the Chyutin Architects website – here.
Photography by Sharon yeari
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vova on 17 Jan 2011 at 3:15 pm #
It’s more like a zen garden, not a public square. What social activities they’re talking about? There is no space for walk, except the maze path for curious first time visitors.
Surrounding grassy hill is much more welcoming than the square itself.
Flipflipmeheidi on 18 Jan 2011 at 1:25 pm #
Nice, clean & timeless!
Greg on 20 Feb 2011 at 7:07 pm #
I think this is a classic example of design for the sake of design over functionality.
I imagine when they took the photographs, the photographer placed the visitors specifically…here and there, sparsely to punctuate the image / adhere to composition…but boy, does that hit it right on the head. That’s about all this plaza is good for, a few sporadic visitors with nothing really going on.
It looks as if it was designed in aerial and nothing more. That grass-strip design has been exhausted time and time again, but those strips have no real function. They’re too narrow to contain any kind of activity. They’re unsittable. They don’t even look welcoming to walk on. They give the impression that they are solely decorative and people should keep off.
It’s a nice image, but its not a plaza in my opinion. I’m never sure why designers insist on designing for spectacle first over functionality.