New Look for Rishon Lezion
Knafo Klimor Architects has won the Rishon Ayalon competition to design ‘urban identity’. Rishon LeZion is the fourth largest city Isreal, close to the large urban centre of Tel Aviv. In the last decades the city has been developed intensively and its historic and urban values have slowly begun to be lost in shiny new developments.
The competition Rishon Ayalon called for a creation of a new gateway project on one of the principal accesses to the city for a number of uses: to enhance its urban identity; to provide additional sustainable spaces for employment and entertainment; to connect the two long divided parts of the city by Ayalon highway; and to reconnect the city to its sea beaches. The brief suggested to reuse the significant land reserves above the Ayalon highway and to design a transportation hub for the existing and planned traffic means in the area.
The winning scheme by Knafo Klimor architects, suggested a complex of office buildings, hotel and convention centre, commercial mall and a transportation centre integrated in a large platform overflying the Ayalon highway, with a large open, green space on top of the platform roof level. The commercial and offices spaces will provide a total area of half a million square meters, which will create about 30,000 employment opportunities. A monorail train line will connect all the buildings in the project and will be operated by solar energy which will be produced on site.
Rishon Ayalon Complex was designed in a sustainable approach to keep CO emissions to a minimum and to create a minimal ecological footprint during the construction process. Each building in the project was designed to produce most of its energy consumption, by innovative solar systems on the facades and other high technology devices integrated in the buildings.
The high density of the project, its high connectivity and its multiland use will spare green natural land and aims to significantly improve the quality of life of local citizens. Rishon Ayalon will offer a multi-functional complex to enjoy a healthy and sustainable life in a rich urban environment, highly connected to public transportation.
Knafo Klimor Architects