Bat Galim community center

The NB Haifa School of Design

Project idea

When I was a kid I had open heart surgery, all my childhood was in pediatric wards in hospitals and I always felt they were not built right. The lobby has always been huge, three to four or even five stories high and everyone is looking at you from above, there is nothing smaller than a sick child. In the Bat Galim neighborhood of Haifa is the hospital where I spent many days as a child, many hospitalized children can leave the ward during the day and be a part of the daily life of the neighborhood. That is why I chose to build a community center that combines the children living in the place with the hospitalized children, in a construction that is a response to the monumentality of children's hospitals.

Project description

The project contains about 2,000 square meters of public center space and outdoor space. The building contains an auditorium that can be used separately from the rest of the building for the benefit of the neighborhood, a library, study spaces and a cafe, on three floors. The excavated floor, which contains study spaces and the outdoor space, makes it possible to create an entrance to the building at a height, so that the child enters the building from a point of strength that allows observation of the occurrence and orientation in the space. Thus the project allows a response to the typical lobby in a children's hospital.

Technical information

The structure is functioned by an array of steel beams and prestressed concrete slabs that allow the creation of extensive developers. The entire traffic system, auditorium and library in the complex is wheelchair accessible, in the space there are no stairs at all so the traffic of all users is in the same space.