Studio Bat-Yam

Studio Bat Yam operated as a hands on, unmediated venue for spatial impact.
Considered one of the poorest coastal municipalities in Israel, in terms of budget allocated per resident, the studio collaborated with the municipality to promote urban innovation, on the ground.
Studio Bat Yam brought together residents and municipal agencies to redress spatial needs.

Characterised by a range of interventions, from small to large, temporary to permanent, Studio Bat Yam aimed at creating a new design agency capable of identifying and bridging between the community and the laden potentials in the studio’s immediate physical contexts, to create meaningful change and impact.

Presence: Located within the Amidar neighbourhood, prompted walk-in engagement with the local community and a deep understanding of the physical and cultural needs of the city and its residents.

Responsiveness: Production of multiple alternatives and rapid iterations for each intervention, adapting design to needs, budgets and spatial conditions.

In Place Auditing: Ongoing field supervision, and problem solving for contractors, supervisors and project managers.

Availability: daily contact with multiple municipal agencies ensuring immediate response.

Transparency: Establishing transparency and commonality between planning partners: the mayor, the city’s director general, parks and landscape authorities, maintenance, electricity and lighting, traffic and engineering.

Immediacy: Focus on small doable projects including street furnishings, clearings, plantings, enabling presence and measurable impact

Standardisation: Implementation of planning guidelines to standardise, document and streamline landscape and spatial transformation processes.

Initiative: Enablement of new initiatives, feedback and spatial knowledge transfer between all vested parties.

Project Impact
Studio Bat Yam operated for 2.5 years. During its activity the studio engaged in unmediated design responses to community needs, upgrading neighbourhood civic spaces.
The immediacy of the interventions, often temporary in nature, in a highly neglected neighbourhood brought a new transparency and heightened sense of local betterment.

At the same time, the gap between areas served and underserved created tensions, introduced unkept promises, raising the question as to the efficacy of temporary interventions without continual upkeep.