White City Forum
White City Forum | פורום העיר הלבנה
A celebration of urbanity in a 24/7 city
Competition Winner
The Forum project is an Exhibitions Centre and is part of the huge Tel- Aviv Wholesale Market Project (under construction through 2013), comprising thousands of apartments, a shopping mall, a school and a sports facilities complex.
The project, located in the city centre, is built on the grounds of the former market, recently relocated to the outskirts.
The Forum will be a platform for genuine urban celebration.
This will create a place that provides an exciting urban experience, attracting the public not only to exhibitions but also to its diverse and bustling urban space.
The neighbouring residential project creates a unique urban situation of a park on the upper level, 8 meters above street level. This park is surrounded on all sides by buildings – a kind of hidden garden.
The Forum develops this upper level as its main urban level and “pulls” the park to the front, thus enhancing its presence in relation to the city. In this way, a comprehensive inviting urban space is created that can operate independently during 24 hours of the day as befits TLV – “the city that never sleeps”.
The chosen Architectural syntax is of a vertical large-scale White City and is derived from the desire for a visual quiet environment that allows good neighbourly relations with the powerful presence of the Wholesale Market Project.
In contradiction to the exhibition halls which require big windowless ” black boxes”, the building’s circulation system is transparent and offers, a vertical roaming space consisting of an escalator system, large viewing windows and balconies. Visitors of the building will enjoy panoramic views of the city at 360 degrees and at different heights.
In addition, there will be a roof- terrace cinema and bar, in the tradition of the Tel-Aviv open cinemas of the past. All transparent parts of the building are protected by shading systems which contain arrangements of LEDs that project videos on very large screens. The rest of the building’s envelope is made of double skin panels.