The Israel Museum

ABOUT

JCDA led the design for the renovation and expansion of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem deploying light to articulate the visitors’ passage through the campus.

The scheme is new construction totalling 95,000 sq ft. It includes the reorganization of visitor circulation and new entrance pavilions. These majorly improve visitor accessibility and weave the museum’s collections with its extraordinary setting. The design responds sensitively to the existing context articulating clear links and routes that connect the existing architecture, landscape and art embodied in the museum. The division between the garden and the campus buildings’ interiors are blurred and the design transforms the intense light conditions of the Mediterranean so the surrounding light variations enter the space.

The experience of light is particularly powerful within thresholds, and to emphasise this, the design separates the building envelopes into two components: enclosure and shade. Breaks in the louvre screening, focus views through the building corners, to reveal the campus organisation and help way-finding. The articulation and number of openings within the façades respond to varing exposures and moderate the sun’s intensity. Louvre screens provide the shading and reflect projected shadows onto the interior, providing mediated views of the exterior light conditions.

The Israel Museum received the DOMUS Israel Award in 2011.