3 Review(s)

A personal account of three major buildings by the famed Israeli architect, Ada Karmi-Melamede: the Supreme Court Building in Jerusalem, co-designed by her brother Ram Karmi (1993); the Open University Campus in Tel Aviv (2004); and the Visitors Pavilion at Ramat Hanadiv, a nature park and memorial garden dedicated to Baron Edmond de Rothschild, near Zikhron Yaakov. These buildings are notable for their human scale, which is an essential component of democratic spaces, for their careful calibration of components, designed to be experienced through movement, as envisaged by Le Corbusier with his promenade architecturale, and for their sensitivity to the surrounding terrain, interacting with the landscape and not sitting on top of it. Lavishly illustrated with photography captured under sunny skies, and accompanied by her own preliminary sketches, plans and elevations, Ada Karmi-Melamede provides an illuminating insight into her work, which will be of particular interest to students of architecture.