Amir Avenue

In the 1930s, streets inspired by luxurious European boulevards became the guiding model for the planning of urban communities and new neighborhoods in Israel. These wide avenues were designed for the well-being of residents, featuring rows of trees, which in recent years have been interspersed with rest areas, reflecting a growing awareness of the need for shade and the encouragement of strolling. Numerous streets were redesigned to become both places to rest and lively meeting places in the city.

“In the meantime, until the city’s houses grow a second storey, or even a third or fourth, Ben-Gurion Boulevard is a street filled with sunlight. The city is bursting with blue skies, with a multitude of elderly people setting out into the streets to air out their canes, with many parents pushing strollers or teaching their young children to ride a bicycle or drink juice with a straw near ‘Tamara’, where Ben-Gurion Boulevard meets Dizengoff Street…The small café at the corner of Ben-Yehuda Street and Ben-Gurion Boulevard has a bustling crowd. All have time to exchange a word with a chance acquaintance, bare their arms to the sun, or drink a coffee at a streetside table”. [Avraham Balaban, “A zen moment on Ben-Gurion Boulevard,” Haaretz Literary Supplement, Tel Aviv Stories Section, March 2016]

The avenues, restored to their former glory over the past decade, are a model of high quality public space in Israel: spaces for pedestrians and cyclists, shaded with old trees, pleasant all year round, offering a variety of options for walking, sitting and observing passersby, with various types of cafés, areas with benches as meeting places, and recently also providing a platform for temporary outdoor exhibitions.

Amir Avenue (or Herzl Avenue), located in the heart of the city of Hadera, is a small avenue built in the 1920s. The ficus trees were planted in 1941 by elementary school students from the Ahad Ha’am School. The street is approximately 160 m long and 12 m wide, constituting an integral part of the city’s historic core.

As part of the renewal of the Hadera city center, the Municipality has defined several focal points for initial intervention: Amir Avenue has been mapped as the central focus, with great potential to transform the look of the city and generate change in the urban fabric.

The idea behind the project is to create a variant of the historic avenue elements, which currently feature three rows of Ficus benjamina. However, the central tree line is incomplete. As with historic avenues, there are walkways between the rows of trees. One path is stepped, while the other is sloped for easier access. Unlike traditional European avenues, here they sought a different interpretation of the central path. Instead of a green area lined with rest areas, they decided to transform the central path into a play and meeting area.

At the upper part of the avenue, at the junction of Ahad Ha’am Street, the historic kiosk was recently restored. This had been a “mobile” kiosk used by the first settlers. The restored kiosk was built on the pattern of the historic one and is now used as an active community café.

The design comprises three major strips around the ficus trees: two are for walkers and cyclists, while the central pathway is an activity route. As part of the plan, an additional crosswalk was routed from the center of the avenue to improve connectivity with adjacent streets. In the central strip they created four informal sculptural seating, between them a path stimulating playfulness passing between grassy hills and wooden logs.

The Yellow Circles, sculptural seating elements, are an additional layer over the traditional boulevard, designed for resting, meeting and playing, offering a unique experience along the entire route. Each seating complex, designed in collaboration with Lemon Collection Ltd, comprises four round benches connected to a diagonal beam. The Yellow Circles enable seating in a variety of formats: one can sit or stretch out inside of a circle, climb over it or walk between the circles. The circles are placed on thin pillars, each at a different angle, all painted yellow and illuminated at night. They constitute significant visual elements in the heart of the city.

Another special stratum along the avenue is the wooden play logs dispersed at its center throughout the entire length. Logs and planks for see-saws combined with the hillocks of grass create an experience of playing along the avenue. The shade from the old ficus trees increases the option of remaining in the place.

The Yellow Circles and the finishing of all elements along the avenue reflect a clean design aesthetic, forming a backdrop to the sculptural character of the sports facilities. The flooring and walls of the green area are all in shades of light grey, while the additional benches that create the seating areas are in wood tones, similar to the colors of the seats of the sculptural benches.

Like other historic avenues in Israel, Amir Avenue has been transformed from a marginal space at the edge of a roadway into a vibrant space. The Yellow Circles and playgrounds along the avenue create a unique atmosphere, a distinctive landscape in the heart of the urban space.