Moria Architects. Studio MA


Office Profile All / Israel /
moria-sekely.co.il

Landscape Factor
We forge transformative landscapes that enhance the livability of urban environments, create meaningful spatial experiences and enable new connections between people and places. We are Moria Architects-Studio MA (formerly Moria-Sekely Landscape Architecture). Our new name celebrates our partnership, growth, diversity and collaboration.
Founder Prof Yael Moria leads the studio, together with partners Adi Levy Trau, and Amir Lotan.

We approach each site with pragmatism, creativity and responsibility. Our site specific interventions act as spatial change agents that operate at the scale of a bench, a plaza, a parklet, a streetscape, a waterfront, an urban plan, a regional ecology or spatial policy. Recasting new possibilities of how the environment can foster participation in civic life. In each we aim to design open ended landscapes, in which we envision, foster and materialize the first moves on site for future engagement.
Our solutions are rooted in civic and contextual understanding rather than an imposed aesthetic.

We work within existing contexts as the starting point in our planning approach. Every spatial intervention offers the potential to create a place and an experience.
We specialize in the integration of multiple interests connecting people and empowering ideas through design initiatives. Our vision is to create places that are full of human relationships, daily life culture and respect for natural assets through rich design discourse and planning.

Our office addresses hybrid design challenges that reflect the complexity of contemporary life and its varied spatial impact. We collaborate with a range of stakeholders to solve complex challenges, fostering innovation in public spaces and creating new urban and natural environments.

In the Public Domain

Homage to Abraham Karavan Tel Aviv’s Gardener

Location: Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv – Jaffa, Israel
Year: 2003
Photo credits: Avraham Hai

A tribute to Tel Aviv’s gardener, Avraham Karavan.

The exhibit focuses on gardens, open spaces, and the public domain in Tel Aviv as a tribute to Avraham Karavan. Telling the stories of sites that survived the construction boom, including the Tel Aviv beach or the Meir Garden, alongside spaces that were transformed, like Dizengoff Circle, Hadassah Garden, or the municipal Zoo now defunct. Spaces that were eradicated – but remain present in the city’s consciousness. The exhibition is a proposal to wander among the various representations, views and readings of the city’s interstitial and green narratives. 
The display of the exhibition at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion is not coincidental. The museum is located in a garden pavilion, sitting in a cultural block off of Tree lined Hen Boulevard. The windows facing Tarsat Street were replaced by translucent glass, so that the intersection of Tarsat – Dizengoff – Shmaryahu Levin and Dizengoff – Hen Boulevard became inside out vistas of the exhibition.

The museum floor was covered by a wall-to-wall carpet with an aerial photograph of Tel Aviv printed on it producing a domestic farm of public space – a hybrid product between a map, and an incalculable space that represents and manages the space itself. […] The visitor who wanders across the floor locates a favorite childhood garden, or an everyday walking route, scaled down to 1: 500, and literally underfoot.

Ibn Gabirol

Location: Tel Aviv – Jaffa, Israel

Clients: Construction and Infrastructure Administration, Tel Aviv Jaffa Municipality
Size: 3 kilometers
Year Built: 2006-2011
Photo credits: Asaf Evron

Iben Gabirol Street is a main commercial street in the heart of Tel Aviv, The street marks the midline between the city’s old north west and the new north east districts.
It is a two way main traffic artery, with three lanes in each direction.
Iben Gabirol is characterized by a built arcade and mixed commercial, office and residential uses along it.

The renewal of Ibn Gabirol followed the municipality’s decision to upgrade the street’s infrastructure. Our work focused on transforming the street into an active urban axis by purging and unifying the street space while introducing a distinct street language that demarcated parallel linear paths for each of its users, pedestrians, bicycles, shops, cars and public transport.

A central tool in the redesign was the consolidation of different systems – traffic signs and streetlights, pedestrians and bicycles, bus stops and parking, seating and resting areas, all of which reinforce the streets continuity and linear functionality.
The ostensibly schematic environmental demarcation of the street space along with the minimalism of the design creates a calming formal simplicity within a complex and frenetic urban environment.

The planning process was engaged multiple stakeholders. 
Iben Gabirol street as an urban “program” creates an abstract framework for its renewed use and unfolding intensity, serving as a local model for mixed use urban street scape.

Gordon Pool

Location: Tel Aviv – Jaffa, Israel
Clients: Tel Aviv Municipality
Size: 7,000 sqml
Year Built: 2009
Photo credits: Gordon Pool

Gordon Pool is a swimming pool on Tel Aviv’s beach fronting the Tel Aviv Marina.

Originally built in 1956, and designed by arch Werner Joseph Whitaker, the Gordon pool included an Olympic swimming pool, a children’s pool and a wading pool, forming a waterfront swimming complex. Characterized by saltwater pumped in three pumps from a well at the depth of 150 meters, and heated no more than 24 degrees, the Gordon pool had a loyal following of avid swimmers.

Following the decision to expand the beachfront promenade and due to the poor physical condition of the pool, the Tel Aviv municipality decided to take ownership over the private pool.

The main challenge we faced at the outset of planning was the removal of barriers (fences, walls, old infrastructures, mobile structures, etc.) to clear a line of sight to the sea and physically open the space, for heightened accessibility. Once cleared, a flat, continuous space was uncovered, spanning from the marina to the coastal promenade, creating an opportunity to establish new relationships between users and seafront recreational uses.

The new saltwater pool was designed as an urban facility, with a main pool with four 50m and three 40m swimming lanes, a 200 sqm children’s pool and a toddler’s pool, submerged in an elliptical gated platform, situated in an open public space. The newly renovated Gordon Pool acts as an unscripted, open waterfront leisure space melding between the community of swimmers and beach visitors.

Rothschild Boulevard’s Edge

Location: Tel Aviv – Jaffa, Israel
Clients: Tel Aviv Municipality
Size: 1,200 sqml
Year Built: 2019

An innovative project in a central business and cultural area in the heart of Tel Aviv.
The project creates an open workspace in an urban setting. The environment that’s formed is both external and public, but also maintains the intimate feeling of an indoor space. The use of scale, design details and materials, transforms the environment into a combination of both an outdoor and indoor space all in one.

The project is made up of two elements; the first one is a work area with three different seating areas that allows to work in a variety of settings: bar seating for individual work, a conference table for large meetings and small tables for intimate meetings. Across from the work area is a stage that can be used for rest, informal work and inspiration.

The project offers a comfortable and well-equipped work environment and propels the concept of open space and offsite work to a whole new level. We researched and distilled what’s most important for people to have in their workspace and created a place that caters to a large community of freelancers alongside the surrounding office employees.

A series of unique urban furniture was designed especially for the project, which combines: a safe charging system (electrical outlets+usb ports), is ergonomical and accessible. Two pergolas, equipped with sliding partitions allow privacy and prevent reflections across the computer screens,shade the seating area. As well as a public wifi network that’s accessible throughout the entire area.

Dizengoff Circle

Location: Tel Aviv – Jaffa, Israel
Clients: Tel Aviv Municipality
Size: 16,700 sqm
Design Year Built: 2017-2018

Dizengoff Circle is an iconic plaza in Tel Aviv’, originally designed by Arch Genia Averbuch and inaugurated in 1938 as part of the city’s canonical urban plan by Sir Patrick Geddes. Forming a roundabout at the meeting of six streets the plaza comprised a circular garden. In the 1970’s, under pressure from traffic engineers, the plaza was redeveloped as a split-level elevated pedestrian plaza, with through traffic passing underneath, designed by Architect Tsvi Lissar. As an overpass, the plaza lost its vitality. Over time, the plaza and the surrounding buildings deteriorated.

Our main role was to “recover” the urban space, by re-grounding the plaza and re-establishing integral relations between the void, the buildings, pedestrians, bicyclists and traffic.  Returning the plaza to street level was the central urban act.

We designed the circular plaza to strengthen its radial structure referencing Averbuch’s design. The external ring offered back an expanded sidewalk enabling spill out of new activities. The central ring is given over to vehicular traffic and the addition of a new bike route.  The inner circle is divided into eight segments, with elevated grass inserts facing each of the radial streets. The ensuing design decisions reflect the preferences of a multitude of municipal stakeholders, coming together.

Since its reopening, a renewed energy has been unleashed in the plaza both on physical and virtual space.

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