A new 2,000-square-meter facility in Jerusalem will be devoted to the study of sustainability.
It will be an academic institution from the Council for a Beautiful Israel, located by the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus, which caters to the study of the sciences, and some of the Holy City’s most important institutions, including the Knesset and the Israel Museum.
The new sustainability center was donated by a former deputy mayor of New York City. It will have two floors of classrooms and conference rooms, an auditorium and a rooftop deck with a view of Sacher Park.
This comes as part of a larger trend across Israel: incorporating the surrounding environment into architecture, from vertical gardening in urban areas of Tel Aviv to the Gutman Visitation Center, built in 2010, which incorporated Jerusalem’s surrounding wooded areas into the buildings construction and design. In 2011, Israel passed stricter environmental building standards to help encourage such innovation.
Eshel Segal, director of the Council for Beautiful Israel, said that they conducted extensive environmental surveys to design a center that maximizes the use of natural light, reducing the facility’s dependency on electricity.
::JPost
Read more about sustainable architecture in Israel:
Sustainable Architecture in Israel Blooms in a Straw-Bale House
Geotectura to Build Israel’s Greenest Building at Tel Aviv University
Vertical Gardening Celebrated in Tel Aviv
Image of Jerusalem from Shutterstock
Author: Leigh Cuen
Leigh Cuen is a freelance journalist currently reporting from Israel. She has written for the Earth Island Journal, the San Francisco Public Press, the Palestinian News Network, J. weekly newspaper and the Women News Network. Follow her @La__Cuen.
A truly sustainable institution might have considered locating itself in a truly walkable, mixed-use area, not in a limited-use tourism quarter.