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Architects: MYS Architects
- Area: 22720 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Nimrod Levy
Text by Guy Re Moor. Lessin Tower development is situated in the central heart of Tel Aviv within walking distance to the Mediterranean beaches & sea, the new tower belt district, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art & Hayarkon Park, west, east, south & north respectively. Located in a predominantly residential neighborhood, the tower development also encompasses within its vicinity the light restoration of Beit Lessin, a 3 story mid-century structure, exemplifying the cultural ideals and architectural aesthetics of the time. Influenced by global & local themes alike, those include the simplicity of volumes, the brut honesty of concrete and stucco, and the rhythmic manipulation of form ingrained with brise soleil sensibilities responding to climatic conditions such as wind and sun. Building on those themes, Lessin Tower contrasts and reinvents its own.
In terms of massing, the new tower volume can be seen as a quartet ensemble of the existing horizontal Beit Lessin mass, turned on its side & lifted upward for pedestrian circulation and greenery within the site.
In terms of materiality & climate sensitivity, the airy & light appearance of the new form contrasts the solid & grounded existing condition nonetheless incorporating shading & brise soleil adaptations.
Programmatically, Beit Lessin consists of existing commercial spaces on the upper floors with retail and cafes on the ground level while the 98.3 meters, 27-story Lessin Tower boosts 58 apartments from one to three per floor and a triplex penthouse.
Building amenities include underground car parking for the complex at large, easily accessible bicycle rooms at ground level in line with green city initiatives, a concierge lobby, a gym, spa & pool facilities. Beit Lessin’s retail & café strip together with Lessin’s tower gym, spa & pool activities plays a prominent role in the performative quality of the building entrance zone. Along with ecological pool & waterfall features, a pocket garden, leisurely placed seating arrangements, casual soft lighting and a variety of vegetation and trees, the atmosphere that is created is of fresh dynamic tranquility within the city fabric. Cementing the tower’s stature within the city skyline, the crown triplex penthouse & technical facilities express an interplay of formal simplicity, structural lightness, and climatic sensibility.
A sun shade and wind break assemblage provide interim moments of solitude between program & level designations while giving way to refined framed urban views of the sea, skyline & park from an infinity pool & deck platform. The produced stage of habitation aspires to create a feeling of “cloud living” in part while providing a refined ornamental interlace for the city at large. Further extending a massing to detail conceptual cohesion, the tower infuses into its fold ceramic frit glass prisms with internal aluminum light reflectors at its outermost edges. Throughout the day and night, the multi-dimensional quality of the prisms plays with ever-changing sun light and internal programmatic lighting conditions which in turn give way to an affect of anti-materiality or a tower defined by air.
With its didactic reinterpretation of local mid-century modernism and the overall flirtation between performative program, vegetation, materiality, and environmental sensibilities extending to an innovative dematerialization affect, the resulting tower and compound stand as a testimonial mark to the ongoing dialog of architecture today.
