Y|K Building

The glass building surrounds the lot with a blurred row, fence, of u-glass, imagined as a garden of wandering plants and herbs that climb and traverse every edge.

Y/K building is located between the sea and the Carmel Market in Kerem HaTeimanim, in Hebrew כֶּרֶם הַתֵּימָנִים means the Vineyard of the Yemenites. A neighborhood in the center of Tel Aviv-Yafo with a strong, distinctive character.

Kerem HaTeimanim forms an urban fabric made up of low buildings, the legacy of the early 1900s, new constructions and cutouts of interstitial voids, formless spaces between all of which are key characteristic elements of the Tel Aviv-Yafo blocks. This area is a place of collision, between the new constructions and the last single-story homes built in the 20’s of the last century. In the narrow streets the gardens grow of their own volition, creating a mosaic of colors, the air is imbued with spicy fragrances.

We treated this plot as an environment to be perceived through the senses, a void that belongs to the community. Y|K building is a place for introspection into urban quotidian life.

The empty corner of the patio that separates the entrances to the two independent housing units rises to its full height. It expresses the fluidity of the building and vegetation allows you to peek between the trees and the interior spaces of the house.

On the ground floor, the first unit, located between the patio and an internal private garden, expands to a height of 4.00 meters, while maintaining the residential character of an external courtyard, merging into the greenery.

The second unit, suspended between the patio and sky, maintains an impressive visual connection with the cityscape in every room thanks to the terraces and the patio void. This project, Y|K building, arises from the need to explore new connections between the urban scale and the natural scale of street life.

The current urban development of the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, and its current architectural conditions, in this period of “second modernity”, post-post-Bauhaus, or of the new public realm of the city, are expressed, on the one hand, in the boom of the new skyline of skyscrapers and commercial spaces and on the other, through the living city, the aspect which interests us most and to which we refer, made up of subspaces for small businesses and spontaneous areas of recreation activities that are not institutionalized, but which actually, represents the life and dynamics of Tel Aviv-Yafo.