Feelings of longing | Sustainable underground project, Downtown Haifa

The project comes to emphasize the yearning and longing for the proximity to the sea that is so close but blocked by the Haifa port and to the past of the downtown, the project is a futuristic reference to the Haifa sea front plan while bringing the area's past into a structure that unites them together.

The past of the place contained a market, open access to the sea and agricultural fields around the Mount Carmel ridge in the form of terraces, which later became the language and concept of the project while connecting to the needs of the environment and connecting to the port campus in the area.

The program first creates a bustling urban square that offers a walk on the roofs of the building, a farmer's market that combines various stalls and 'farm to table' style cooking workshops, and a faculty of agriculture that actually helps the market. In addition to the faculty's needs, there is a need for an educational library, so the library is also connected to a public library that serves the rest of the community.

The entire structure revolves around the purity of the vegetation and how to grow plants underground and the introduction of light into it and the creation of connectivity between the multitude of functions, among others, in a sort of circular economy.

The project concept drew inspiration from the agricultural world of the terraces that were on Mount Carmel in the past and from here an important question was asked and that is how to turn an agricultural terrace into an urban use?

The answer to this for me was after research and thinking that if the agricultural terrace is used to flow water between the terraces and the plants then the urban terrace will be used to flow the movement of people between the various functions.

The arrangement of the building and the patio yards in it was created with the help of the direction of the wind so that the breeze from the sea would enter and pass through them in the building and bring the aromas of the sea into it and also let in daylight.