March 18, 2013—Israeli architecture firms Schwartz Besnosoff and SO Architecture recently unveiled their winning proposal for a competition held by the Israeli Architects Association to design Jerusalem’s new Museum of Nature and Science. The new building is intended to be dynamic and interactive with its surroundings and the environment, featuring natural lighting, green roofs, climbing walls, a water cascade and an outdoor gallery.
According to the architects, the proposal attempts to offer Jerusalem an “airy urbanity,” helping residents of the capital “make friends” with the government buildings. It consists of an open park and the proposed building in the form of a series of small single-story buildings. The building typology is said to imitate the form of Swiss cheese, with “green holes” of varying size and location according to the level.
The interior of the building is organized to ensure interactive and flexible space for a variety of exhibitions. It comprises meta-galleries organized in a linear path, offices, a conference center, study areas, labs, storerooms, rooms for exhibition setup, a parking lot, and a planetarium, arranged according to their need for natural light and to allow maximum accessibility to the nature museum and the science museum. The plan enables separate operation of different parts of the building.
The building’s sustainable features include green roofs, some forming a continuation of the park and some joining the internal movement as publicly accessible theme gardens typifying the landscapes of Israel; cross-ventilation of the building on summer nights; moisture added to improve indoor air quality by means of a system of water channels and pools passing through the buildings; and use of the thermal mass to heat the building in winter.
The internal watercourse serves as a source of natural light through the water, a reservoir of grey water, a desalinization pool, a waterfall and a water accumulation pool. The architects also created an impressive “canyon” (wadi) between the building and the mountain that serves as the base of the waterfall, a climbing wall, a grove and a channel of natural light.
