Page 17 - The Architecture of Nadler-Nadler-Bixon-Gil

serrated concrete objects lends the theater’s entrance
hall a monumental dimension that blends with the
building’s soft horizontal lines, forming a structure that is a
masterpiece of modern architecture in Jerusalem.

A transformation in the firm’s work occurred
in the late 1960s, as a result of the prevalence of
“structuralism” in international architecture. Structuralist
theories influenced some of the most significant and
prominent projects undertook by the firm during those
years, particularly the Builders’ Insurance Fund Building
in Jerusalem (1965-72); the Zalman Aranne Central
Library at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer
Sheva (1968-72); and the Leo Baeck Education Center
in Haifa (1966-71). The heavy monoliths that had up until
then characterized the firm’s buildings were now
dismantled into components that repeated themselves
in cell formations.

Having joined the firm in 1966, Moshe Gil brought
new concepts that were circulating at the Technion. At
their basis was the idea that eternal laws could possibly
be translated, via an interdisciplinary act involving biology
and technology, into a geometric language of abstract
architecture; one that links the local to the universal. As a
student of Alfred Neumann and Al (Alfred) Mansfeld, Gil
believed that these concepts would produce an objective
system for efficient planning of complex structures, while
giving architecture added value due to the connection
between human beings and the eternal dynamics of
natural law.

The Nadlers and Bixon were familiar with these
structuralist ideas as bears witness (among others) one
of their most outstanding projects from the 1960s: the
residential complex in Jerusalem’s Gonen neighborhood,
where rows of duplicated buildings merge seamlessly
with the hill’s slopes. Moreover, the desire to create
architecture that transcends its material dimension – or,
in Gil’s words, “the mysterious vanishing point that gives
architecture value and meaning” – is present in numerous
public buildings the firm planned over the years. The best
among them – even the ones less known, such as Beit
Elisheva in Jerusalem (1960-62) and Beer Sheva’s City

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