Contesting the design of Rabin Square

The Tel Aviv Municipality and the Israel Architects Association are planning a contest for the redesigning of Rabin Square. Tel Aviv's city engineer, architect Danny Kaiser, announced plans for the contest at a conference in honor of International Architects' Day last week. No date has been set, so for the moment the contest is just one more step in the winding road to a new design for the square.

It was actually the local planning and building committee that decided to hold the contest, when it received - more than six months ago - the plans for the underground parking lot to be built beneath the square.

Some committee members objected to the appointment of the project's planners - namely, Kaiser - and insisted that continuing the procedures for approving the parking lot should be conditional on running a contest for redesigning the square itself.

The plans for the parking lot have stirred up a stormy public debate, which even reached the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee.

At a meeting held in June, the committee warned that if the contest proposal was not accepted, a bill would be presented to the Knesset for the expropriation of Rabin Square from Tel Aviv's jurisdiction.

So far, the parking lot plans have not been submitted to the Knesset committee or to the regional planning committee, nor has an expropriation law been promulgated. Deputy Mayor Michael Ro'eh says that plans will be submitted soon, when the city and the Knesset committee finish dealing with more urgent matters.

Meanwhile, the city council is set to hold a public debate regarding Rabin Square at one of its plenary sessions.

Intellectuals and architects will participate in the debate, which was proposed by council member Mordechai Virshubski. "It will be philosophical, ideological and democratic," promised Ro'eh, although it will have no bearing on actual planning procedures for the square, which are in the hands of the various legally appointed planning committees.

This is without a doubt the reverse of what should have happened. Now, instead of discussing the matter before it is sealed, it is being debated afterward. Had the city's ideology been discussed democratically, all the suspicion could have been avoided.

The city's leaders were the main forces behind the vagueness, whisperings, rumors and misunderstandings over the plans.

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Contesting the design of Rabin Square