Page 29 - The Architecture of Nadler-Nadler-Bixon-Gil

Shulamit and Michael Nadler at
the inauguration ceremony of Beit Armoni (class 26, 1954). Shlomo Gur, a dominant figure in
Sokolov Journalists Association
House, Tel Aviv, 1957
‫שולמית ומיכאל נדלר בטקס חנוכת בית‬ set and managed a strict schedule, otherwise it would
,‫אגודת העיתונאים ע"ש נחום סוקולוב‬ have gone on for another year or two, as with architects
1957 ,‫תל־אביב‬
26
abroad); and Hanan Havron (class 25, 1953) with Ziva
the Homa Umigdal (Wall and Tower) pre-state settlements
was put in charge of executing the new campus project.
Shulmait remembers the groups’ working process: “Gur
everyone has their own opinion. Somehow we overcame
our differences and in a year had arrived at a sketch.
Our system was that we all worked on drafts. Each
architect brought sketches and then we chose in which
direction to work. Bear in mind that it is no coincidence
that a number of proposals were chosen as they were
essentially very similar.”
Since then and until the end of the decade the
firm gained a sequence of competition wins: in 1956 the
third prize for planning a Housing project for workers of
Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital and the Hebrew University
Medical Center in Jerusalem; in 1957 a second acquisition
prize in the competition for planning the Knesset, the
Israel Parliament Building in Jerusalem; and in 1959
third prize for planning the Soldier’s House in Tel Aviv.
Unfortunately, architectural documentations of these
important proposals were not preserved. In 1958 the
Nadlers, together with Bixon, won a competition for
planning the Sherover Theater and Concert Hall in Talbiyeh,
Jerusalem (today the Jerusalem Theater) [pp. 280-291],
and following the win Bixon joined the firm, now Nadler-
Nadler-Bixon, as partner. The decade ended therefore
with a significant stylistic change in the firm’s work, a
transitional stage toward the consolidation of the Brutalist
language that characterizes many of its canonic works of
the following decades.
In 1946, the year Shulamit and Michael Nadler won the
prize for planning Ruppin College of Agriculture, Shmuel
Bixon had begun his studies at the Technion’s Architecture
Department. Yet three months in, the War of Independence
broke out. As a 21 year old Jerusalem native and member
of the Haganah elite force, Bixon took part in the battles,