Page 37 - The Architecture of Nadler-Nadler-Bixon-Gil

Moshe Gil, 1980s Gil adapted well to the design of apartment buildings that
80‫ שנות ה־‬,‫משה גיל‬ stood out owing to their facades, which were unusual
in public housing in Israel during those years. After a
34 year’s work, Gil joined Nadler-Nadler-Bixon which had
expanded significantly, and had by then moved to a
larger office on Helsinki Street in north Tel Aviv. “I began
working on Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa [pp.
98-107], on the Builders’ Insurance Fund Building in
Jerusalem [pp. 390-393], and later also on the Children’s
Nursery in Givatayim [pp. 108-113]”; Gil recalls his
early days in the office in 1966: “The arrangement was
so: I had my own corner at the office, I did sketches,
perspectives and models. Once every ten days everyone
would gather and give their critique. Shula encouraged
me to continue; Michael was more reserved.” Gil quickly
found his place in the office and in 1970 became a
named partner.

If until that point it seemed that the firm’s
work concentrated on the autonomous object – whole,
elevated, as if floating (sometimes on a platform) – the
arrival of Gil brought with it a greater attention to the
environmental context of the buildings, an attempt to
integrate buildings into their environment by
communicating with the landscape and topography.
The seeds of Gil’s systematic and modular concepts
were planted by his Technion teachers Al Mansfeld and
Alfred Neumann, whose influence is apparent in the
works of that generation of architects, including Israel
Goodovitch, Eldar Sharon and Zvi Hecker (the latter two
also collaborated for a period with Neumann).

Leo Baeck Education Center is one of the
earliest works in which Gil’s involvement is clearly felt.
The school was designed as a single building that
functions as an open system: a series of forms and
volumes weaved onto a connecting backbone. A similar
type of system can also be seen in the ORT School
of Engineering in Jerusalem (1970-78) [pp. 114-125],
and the Lerner Sports Center at the Hebrew University
campus on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem (1995-2000)
[pp. 292-295] – projects that since their inauguration
continued to develop.