urban nomad - jerusalem
5) industrial/product design
6) architecture
1) improve the human spirit
2) increase awareness of the homeless people
This project was done as part of third year Architecture Studio in Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
The Studio’s theme was pavilions. The brief was an opened one, and each student executed it in a different way.
Our pavillion’s goal was to raise the public awareness to the homeless people’s situation.
During that time, in “Bor Shiber” park in Jersualem, 40 families who have lost their homes, have set a tent encampment and called it “*The Socio-Economic Terror Wounded”. These families have lived in this encampment for four months. (Hundreds of other people who live in the city are considered homeless as well).
As students, we have felt the need to express our criticism towards the government’s helplessness and the public’s impermeability to this situation, by desingning a criticizing project which raises questions, creates discussion, and which puts the homeless human being in the center.
By working in collaboration with the people of the encampment and the homeless centers in Jerusalem, we have planned a project which was eventually exhibited in the encampment itself, where it gained the attention of the people who lived there, academy members and bypassers.
The project has been presented in different other exhibitions during the past years.
The project’s goal was executed by designing a set of wearable items, with an affinity between an outfit and a house, and which function as a “self sufficient market” to the homeless people.
By building a “wearable house” out of the internal parts of car tires (an accessible, free material), and a “wearable furniture” out of canvas, we have raised the rethorical questions which are the meaning of this project – Is the street a respectable living place for a human being? Is a cheap, accessible and functional item which provides cover, is the right human solution?
The answers to these questions are no.
Each item in this set has several functions which enable the wearer to “survive” in the urban jungle, and which answer the requirements of “minimal habitat” which are supposed to help the homeless human be part of the modern society.
These requirements were determined after sleeping at the encampment and befriending and sharing with its tenants. The items will be functional in each and every point of time, and using it is accessible and connects to the street.
Developing the concept of this singular-urban item combined several disciplines – architecture, industrial design, fashion , anatomy and recycled materials art.
