IFTACH MASHAL
IFTACH MASHAL
יפתח משל
NIR OZ and I
Two weeks after October 7, I was supposed to start my sixth and final year of architecture studies at the Faculty of Architecture at the Technion.
The final year of studies is the most important, as I need to apply the tools and knowledge I've gained over the years in my final project. The topic of the project is chosen by the student.
In the summer of 2023, I spent a lot of time thinking about the topic for my final project. I chose to design in the Migdal neighborhood in the city of Ashkelon, my birthplace.
The encounter with Kibbutz Nir Oz in early December, two months after the massacre, changed my plans.
We stationed ourselves in the old department store to be on standby for evacuating the wounded from the forces maneuvering in the Khan Yunis area, and for three consecutive months, I lived in the devastated Kibbutz Nir Oz.
The sights on my first walk through the kibbutz were overwhelming. Many houses were completely burned down, there were bullet marks on the windows of the safe rooms, entire families had been wiped out, lives cut short in an instant. A place that would never be the same again.
Every day and every walk revealed new layers to the story of the kibbutz, layers tied to the place, its residents, and its history. I met survivors of the massacre who came to collect their belongings, I spoke with the founders of Nir Oz who insisted on returning, continuing to come to the kibbutz every morning, I met people who had lost everything and didn’t know if they would ever return.
And so, for almost a year, I worked on my project alongside intense reserve duty, first in Kibbutz Nir Oz and later in other kibbutzim. After a tough day in Gaza, I would return to the kibbutz and open my computer. On a rest day, I would stare for hours at the burned houses and imagine how life could be breathed back into them.
As a person, a soldier, and an architect, I was faced with the question of how to restore a wounded and bleeding community to its home after experiencing such significant trauma in this place.
Out of the grief and mourning, the war and the team, while living through the trauma of Nir Oz, my final project grew, offering a planning approach for the rehabilitation of the kibbutz.
TRAUMA
In order to approach the work of rehabilitation and understand how to act properly in the place, I began by studying what spatial trauma occurred in Nir Oz, and simultaneously, what Nir Oz kibbutz is and what its DNA is.
It is natural to think that only the people of Nir Oz experienced the trauma on October 7th, but that is not the case. The trauma of Kibbutz Nir Oz is felt in several layers within the kibbutz:
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The paths of the kibbutz – On the pastoral paths of Nir Oz, the survivors of the massacre were exposed to the horrific scale of the events in the kibbutz until they were rescued.
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The aesthetics – The only layer in the kibbutz that was not directly impacted by the trauma is also the only layer that rehabilitated itself and "returned to itself." The huge dissonance between the green grass and the burned houses is felt everywhere.
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The buildings – The built environment is the layer most severely affected. 45% of the houses were completely burned down on Black Saturday, and those that were not, were looted. The looting also occurred in the kibbutz's farm and the factories surrounding it.
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The protection – The place where kibbutz members should have felt the safest is also the place where members of Nir Oz were kidnapped from their homes or lost their lives. A sense of lost trust in the protected space where people lost their lives.
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The community – 1 in 4 members of the Nir Oz community was either kidnapped or killed. Elderly people, men, women, children, and families— a whole community that will never be the same again.
KIBBUTZ
I chose to examine the space through four main layers: the aesthetics, the community and the individual, the home, and the protection, in order to develop planning tools for rehabilitation. I did this through conversations with Nir Oz residents who agreed to talk with me, archival information, and wandering through the kibbutz.
The aesthetics of Nir Oz were cultivated over the years by the legendary gardener Ran Pawoker, who established the principles of landscape planning in the kibbutz. The landscaping in the kibbutz is sustainable, with a strong emphasis on water conservation by choosing appropriate plants, ground cover, and collecting runoff water.
The gardening and lawns are the hallmark of Nir Oz, a full layer that the violence did not target. Nir Oz's collective landscaping has a healing power and strong meaning in the collective memory. The strong dissonance between the sight of the blooming trees and flowers against the backdrop of the burned houses briefly obscures what happened in the kibbutz on October 7th.
Another layer deals with the community and the individual within the kibbutz. The dialogue with the community throughout the process was not easy, as the proximity to the event did not allow for true public engagement. Nir Oz, like most kibbutzim, underwent a privatization process, a mechanical transformation that turned the kibbutz into nearly a community settlement. The places originally planned to accommodate shared spaces have emptied of content, as the collectivism has changed. Shared life still happens and is organized spontaneously, less around meals, ceremonies, or communal sleeping, and more in places that don't have a specific definition. The shift in collectivism happens in several scales: in the neighborhood yard, in the large lawn of the dining hall, and in public buildings. Collectivism in the kibbutz has changed, but it still exists, and it happens mainly in the open spaces, in a shared space where there is inclusion and a shared fate. Personal rehabilitation occurs through the community and shared spaces.
The typological change in the kibbutz stems from the weakening of the collective and the strengthening of the nuclear family. The "home" model in the early years of the kibbutz was that functions were scattered throughout the kibbutz, with the paths serving as corridors. The weakening of the collective core led to the addition of daily activities to the private home. Over the years, the desire for private space grew, and small kitchens, private bathrooms, and showers were added to the original rooms. The apartments expanded slightly, but they always retained the principles of simplicity and functionality. Kibbutz members do not have ownership rights over the homes, as they belong to the kibbutz. Since the home space is the entire kibbutz, not a specific building, it doesn't matter which house you lived in or the level of damage it suffered. The trauma belongs to all the kibbutz members, and the buildings should be treated as a single layer.
The protection layer in the kibbutz is very clear and cannot be missed. In the early 2000s, with the beginning of rocket fire toward communities near Gaza, it was decided to fortify the four kindergartens in the kibbutz with concrete covers over the buildings. Thanks to the physical properties of the fortified rooms, the damage to them was minimal compared to the horrific events that took place inside them. In the safest place, a quarter of the kibbutz members lost their lives and their freedom.
REHABILITION
The rehabilitation principles I developed are based on a combined study of the trauma layers of the kibbutz and an analytical study of Nir Oz. Even in this chapter, the rehabilitation principles are built from several layers: the destroyed houses, the building typologies, the fragmented community, the famous landscaping of Nir Oz that rehabilitated itself independently, society and the individual, privatization and collectivism, the kibbutz paths as the organizing principle of the place, the protection layer, and more.
The heritage of Kibbutz Nir Oz embodies the question of how we can use knowledge of the place to think about its future. The paths, the landscaping, and the public buildings are layers that the violence did not directly target, and they have strong significance in the collective memory of the kibbutz members. As part of maintaining the continuity between the past and the future, these layers will be preserved in the kibbutz, and future construction will align with them. The landscaping, a full layer that rehabilitated itself, the paths that immediately bring the people of the place back home, and the public buildings that are part of the familiar landscape of the kibbutz.
The trauma occurred in the private space, in the home. However, the healing will happen through the public space because the only thing that can heal the wounded places is the people, the community. The way for people to heal is by returning to the values of partnership and resilience, which are not only individual but also communal. From this approach, a network of communal spaces was created, positioned where the destroyed homes once stood. These spaces, based on the footprint of the house that was there before, will provide a foundation for collective activities, with the community having the choice of what each space will become. These spaces can be enclosed, open, or somewhere in between—a writing workshop, a youth club, a weekend market, or a folk dance square. The functional diversity and the shared activities will rebuild the community's resilience.
In the future kibbutz I propose, there is no dichotomous separation between the private and the collective. Instead, there is a redefinition of communal relationships in the forms of living, protection, and daily life. The trauma in the kibbutz revealed the relevance of shared values.
The third part deals with the future housing design in Kibbutz Nir Oz, addressing the challenges of changes in the community structure and the need to prepare for different populations. The planning principles are based on flexibility, both in the mix of residences and in the functionality of the buildings. Since we cannot know what the community composition will be in the future, there is a need for a flexible housing mix that accommodates different age groups and diverse needs. One of the central principles is the creation of intergenerational homes, so families will not have to move when their family status changes. This will allow the house to adapt to the changing needs of the residents.
Additionally, the housing design aims to emphasize communal cooperation within the private space, creating an environment where people can live in collaboration with others within their personal spaces. The modules intended for construction will be flexible, allowing for changes in their size and location according to need.
The fourth and most complex layer of rehabilitation is the one that deals with memory and commemoration—the commemoration of a quarter of the Nir Oz community that will never return, as well as the historical memory from the early days of the kibbutz's establishment. The four kindergartens in the center of the kibbutz are an iconic feature of Nir Oz, a truly symbolic place, nearly as recognizable as the dining hall or the silo on the main road. Two of the kindergarten buildings were completely burned on October 7th, and in the other two, the army gathered the survivors of the massacre until they were evacuated from the kibbutz.
The kindergartens will undergo "repurposing," with the massive concrete shelters remaining, while the kindergartens beneath them will be dismantled, and new gardens will be built beside them. Beneath the concrete shelters, on the ground level, a space will be created for collective activities for all kibbutz members, and on the level above the ground, a memorial space will be built within the concrete shelter to honor the kibbutz members who did not survive the massacre. In this way, a two-layered space will be created, dealing with memory and community, and engaging in a dialogue about a new fabric of life alongside the commemoration of a part of the community that no longer exists.
