Page 31 - The Architecture of Nadler-Nadler-Bixon-Gil

who was to collaborate with Bixon on the planning of
Jerusalem Theater.

Following an ideological crisis, Bixon left the
movement and in 1946 enrolled at the Bezalel Art School,
where he studied under Mordechai Ardon. A major
influence was noted in the classes of the Cubist sculptor
Ze'ev Ben-Zvi, a pioneer of modernist Israeli sculpture.
“Outside of Bezalel a small group formed at Ben-Zvi’s
studio, which created an educational and creative
framework,” recalls Bixon. “David Palombo was the living
spirit of the group, and there we absorbed from his
character and views and I began to understand what art
is.” Following these gatherings, Bixon decided to study
architecture at the Technion, during which time he assisted
the influential lecturer Professor Alexander Klein. Yet his
strongest influence came from Professor Al Mansfeld: “in
contrary to Klein’s rigor and strictness, with Mansfeld I
understood that one can barge, unravel and play.”

Upon graduation Bixon returned to his parents’
home in Jerusalem, where he hoped to settle down
and find employment in architecture, with no success.
In 1952 he tried his luck in Tel Aviv, when the architect
Vita Yachvitz (Feldman), his classmate at the Technion,
told him about a couple of architects from Tel Aviv with
a young and successful office that wanted to expand.
Bixon met with Shulamit Nadler in the office on Bar-Kochva
Street. “We decided to try. They had one worker who had
left, and I actually came in to replace him.”

Among the firm's projects during the early years
was a Workers’ Cultural Center and Keren Cinema in
Beer Sheva [pp. 232-241]. Bixon accompanied Michael
Nadler on a trip to the southern city to supervise the
building site and meet the city’s mayor David Tuviyahu.
“We arrived on a very hot day, and drove with Tuviyahu
in a car, while large bunches of tumbleweed rolled about
the roads,” he recalls. “The cinema was two or three
kilometers away from the old city, the sole building in an
area where the city’s civic center was set to be built.”
The extreme weather conditions and the problems
caused by sand storms and tumbleweed were on Bixon’s
mind when he and the Nadlers submitted the winning

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