Page 32 - The Architecture of Nadler-Nadler-Bixon-Gil

proposal for Beer Sheva’s City Hall near Keren Cinema
at the beginning of the 1960s [pp. 382-389] – a fort-like
structure, self-enclosed around internal courtyards.

It was one of the first concrete buildings the
firm designed, and the Nadlers and Bixon offered their
own interpretation to the language of exposed concrete:
a tight dynamic system of vertical concrete planks, each
one slightly concealing a segment of the adjacent plank
while breaking the fall of sunrays on the façade. As the
building needed to be both official and humble (“in those
days everything had to be humble,” says Shulamit), a
tower was planned beside the central horizontal building
– a tall focal point marking it as a governmental institute
and simultaneously serving for observation. In this
building, like many others planned by the firm following
the arrival of Bixon, the façade design is especially
invested with a prominent sculptural quality. The
attention to the added role of architectural objects as
significant spatial and urban points of reference, led
from then on to a series of impressive public buildings
whose presence stood out in their environment.

After winning the prestigious competition for
planning the Sherover Theater (1958), Bixon, who had
been a firm employee for six years, became Shulamit
and Michael Nadlers’ first named partner. Bixon: “A
theater is a thing of life, and even before it is built it stirs
the imagination very differently from an office building.
At the firm we deliberated how to work with stone, and
arrived at the conclusion that the walls don’t have to be
rectangular, they can also be curved. We invested a lot
of work, and the moment we allowed ourselves more
freedom, and the original site was changed – so did the
building. The theater utilizes stone in a unique way,
providing both dramatic opportunities and great restraint.
This is what I love about it: its capriciousness is controlled;
every curve is there for a reason. Many peculiar buildings
were designed over the years, but this is certainly not
one of those, it is a dramatic building.”

The difference between the 1958 competition
submission and the building that was eventually built
and inaugurated in 1971, embodies the shifts in Israeli

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