יעלה סילברמן
Yaella Silverman

Jerusalem has become a concept separated from her reality, a place that exists in the collective mind of the exilic Jew, but the earthly Jerusalem is far removed from that. Consequences of this dissonance can be seen in the architectural language of Jerusalem today (or lack thereof).
The British Mandatory architecture demonstrated an understanding of the identity of Jerusalem, that it is a city of stone, with all holy sites and burial sites of the same local limestone, from the minarets reaching heavenwards to the graves dug into the lime crust of the earth. It understood the significance and weight of the legacy of building with Jerusalem stone, as has been done for thousands of years. Its dictum that all future buildings shall be clad in stone intended to honor that, and to signal to the architects of the future that buildings should respect the vernacular.

A Path to Jaffa Gate celebrates material by digging into the earth and exposing the bedrock of Jerusalem, exposing the marks left by structures of old - great quarries and cisterns that displaced ground from below to above. Those ancient structures sustained the city then, and the spaces we excavate today must do the same.

The project sits at the liminal space between the end of Jaffa Road and Jaffa Gate. The site is filled with underground relics - the cisterns and quarries of today - and creates new public spaces with these excavations, instead of filling them and then re-excavating again. Similarly, Jaffa Gate was once a major part of the city, both historically and commercially; structures were once built upon the gate and walls, and a market used to surround the gate. The project reconnects that space to the living Old City and downtown Jerusalem through commerce, a hostel, and a path to Jaffa Gate.

The Greek architect Pikionis, who built an ascending circular path of stone to the Acropolis, inspired the removal of the above ground levels of the Dan Pearl hotel, and their reinstitution of its stones as a path, a mosaic of discarded stone fragments from the area. The path starts at Jaffa Road and branches out towards Kikar Zahal, with its body leading to the gate. It spreads out above the roof of Mamilla, and becomes a large piazza around the gate, where a market that links Mamilla with the Armenian Souk sits. Another smaller path begins at Kikar Zahal. Stone steps take you down to the path that runs along the Old City wall leading to Jaffa Gate. The path exposes the bedrock of the wall, and creates a space to experience the stone alongside you as you descend and then ascend to the gate. The path has loggias to sit, and niches to stand back and take in the height of the wall.

There is another smaller path, a path that runs along the Old City wall, that descends and then ascends to Jaffa Gate. The ‘wall path’ exposes the bedrock of the wall, and creates a space to feel the stone next to your body as you walk. The path alongside the wall connects to the underground hostel, to Mamilla, and to the Byzantinian archaeology that sits beneath the gate.

The underground area of the site takes over part of the parking structure of Mamilla, and is a hostel and underground “street” with a lively underground scene that is visible from above through penetrations in the path. When the path is silent at night, and Jaffa Gate looms in the distance, the steady din of voices rises up from below and surrounds the area with life.

This combination of careful materiality that is rooted in the cities history and physical connections between crucial points of the city succeeds in breaking from Jerusalem's existing conceptual limitations, creating a tangible experience that is true to the city's identity.