Rothschild Tower / Richard Meier & Partners

Architects: Richard Meier & Partners
Location: Rothschild Blvd 36, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
Design Principals: Richard Meier, Reynolds Logan
Project Architects: Thibaut Degryse, Ananth R. Sampathkumar
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Roland Halbe,  Scott Frances

Collaborators: Gil Even-Tsur, John Jourden
Owner: Berggruen Residential ltd. 
Associate Architects: BLK Architects and Town Planners
Floors: 42 floors above ground
 Number Of Units: 147 apartments
Ground Footprint: 2470 m2 (26,586 sqft). 
Net Floor Area (Typical Floor) : 750 m2 (8,072 sqft)
 Height Of Building: 154m (505 ft)

From the architect. Rothschild Tower is a simple graceful residential tower lightly resting on a retail base. The design is inspired by Bauhaus principles that were based on functionality and a certain sparseness or economy of means using modern mass produced materials, and in this case a repetitive planning module. The fundamental considerations that shape the tower design are the quality of light in the plan, views to the city and sea, an efficient assembly of “served” and “service” spaces around the core, and the building’s relationship with the existing fabric and massing on Rothschild Boulevard.

Reynolds Logan, design partner-in-charge, comments: “The tower and all its contents are designed to recognize a role as a citizen to the city, with gestures to different scales at the base, shaft, and top of the building. The tower is deliberately lifted above the street on graceful piloti, with an undulating glass wall in deference to the importance of this important intersection of Rothschild and Allenby. The transparency and lofty openness of the ground floor lobby, garden, and retail spaces contribute to a vibrant streetscape.”

Lightness and transparency of the tower and base are the primary goals, not only to reduce the apparent scale and mass in the context of the low to mid-rise neighborhood, or the scale-less reflective towers in the area, but to express the optimism, openness, and energy of the more secular modern character of Tel Aviv. The delicate louver screen is an elegant white “veil,” inspired by the ventilated protective layers of more traditional Middle Eastern clothing. It both defines and obscures the distinction between the public image of the building and the private realm within. The louver elements of the screen protect the delicate clear glass skin, and have local architectural precedents in the ubiquitous “treeseem”, the sliding louver blinds enclosing open air porches or negative spaces so common in the existing neighborhood Bauhaus buildings.

“Transparency and the related accessibility and connection issues merit respect for the circumstances of each project, especially in dense urban environments. We well recognize the paradoxical nature of balancing those issues, and at the Rothschild Tower the delicate louver screen is an elegant white veil inspired by the ventilated protective layers of more traditional Middle Eastern clothing. It is also a “buffer” of sorts, and obscures the distinction between the public image of the building and the private realm within,” states Mr. Logan.

The Lobby and Retail spaces are spare, lofty, and open to the surrounding streets and neighborhood. Behind the tower a former through-block retail arcade is being restored to its former glory to firmly embed the building and its residents in the pulse of the neighborhood.

At the larger scale of the city, the lightness and transparency of the tower will distinguish it dramatically among the glass and heavy neighboring towers, and perhaps inspire sustainable approaches to a more “accessible” character for large buildings in this climate in the future.