HATZOFIM - The New "Shalit" Scouts Club 

ABOUT:

The new Scout Club is located in a verdant neighborhood in the city of Kfar Saba.

As a preliminary step, our team was given a generic planning program designed to serve any youth movement or club. The first question that we asked ourselves at the beginning of design process was how could we create architecture that can challenge institutional norms? A space for a large group of young girls and boys whose activities could stretch boundaries and serve as a break from their daily routine within the traditional framework of their schools?

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These thoughts and our commitment to the sense of place were key in creating an architectural concept that would go beyond accommodating programmatic functions and divisions. Instead, we focused on ideas such as transparency, labyrinth-like spaces, flexibility, and shelter, and explored those through sketches. At times, a sketch would inform a concept; at others, a concept transformed into a sketch.

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One of the first sketches created the spatial arrangement for the new club: a platform that defined the space of the project, a collection of cubes that created a hierarchy of courtyards, a huge pergola to create shade and an envelope composed of a lace wall that would help gather the whole group. The plan we created proposed a new typology for the scouts, that radically departed from the strict organization of traditional classrooms spread linearly across hallways.

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The project is composed of three independent clusters, each comprised out of two activity rooms that are then connected to two courtyards. The rooms connect at the corners and the entrance to the activity room is through a courtyard open to the sky and closed by the semi-transparent walls built with perforated cinder blocks. All of these spaces also connected to a main patio.

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The common yard is closed by a multi-purpose hall. It faces the street and allows the entire community to be received during the hours when the scouts are not active, while at the same time providing acoustic protection for the neighbors.

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The low budget meant that we must be creative with few means. We created a simple and elegant architectural language that is based in three materials: regular cinder block walls covered with plaster, walls that were given color and walls that were left exposed, with the perforated cinder blocks serving as divisions. The colors chosen were the ones used by the particular branch of Scouts.

HATZOFIM

David Zehavi 19, Kfar Saba.