Urbanie & Urbanus

Architecture is Made for People: A Holistic- Phenomenological Approach to Architecture Case Study: Residential Building in Tel Aviv

Nili Portugali

Practicing Architect; senior lecturer; researcher; published author and film director

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present my interpretation of the holistic-phenomenological worldview in theory and in practice. I will demonstrate how this approach, as well as the planning process I follow – a process fundamentally different from conventional ones, were implemented in a residential building I designed and built in the city of Tel-Aviv. A process that forms a coherent representation of a complete worldview - a humanistic worldview that I have adopted and been trying to implement for over 45 years of work in projects I designed, at all levels of scale. Hopefully, we will be raising a discussion and a challenge to 21st-century architecture as to how we should intervene in a moral and human way within an existing environment, whether urban or natural when integrating within it a new contemporary building.