Developed in collaboration with designer

Ariel Rabi,

the project seeks to create a new cemetery for the Jewish community  a place that combines the requirements of Jewish burial and ceremonial practices with an architectural and landscape vision of a memorial garden.

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Rather than creating a rigid and densely packed environment of rows of gravestones, the burial grounds were designed as a quiet, shaded garden. Paths branch out and gently curve between the burial plots, while trees and clusters of vegetation along the boundaries of the site and within the burial areas break the geometric order and create intimate spaces for reflection and remembrance.

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Alongside the garden, a series of buildings was planned to accommodate Jewish burial ceremonies: a gathering and eulogies hall, a Tahara room, a family room, an office, restrooms, and service and mechanical rooms. The layout separates the circulation of visitors and family members from the route of the deceased and the operational functions of the complex.

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Two design approaches were explored during the planning process. The first proposed a low, restrained, and relatively conventional building that would blend into the surrounding vegetation and environment a more practical and feasible solution for construction under the site conditions.

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The second alternative sought to give the site a distinct architectural and symbolic identity. The eulogies hall was conceived as a sculptural and monumental structure composed of tall, sloping triangular planes that create a powerful silhouette within the landscape. The building is not merely an enclosure for the farewell ceremony; it becomes an architectural memorial in its own right a kind of monument on a building scale, perhaps evoking flames of fire: a torch of remembrance.

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The geometric planes rise above the vegetation, while the cemetery garden and its soft, winding paths continue around them. This creates an intentional contrast between the monumental architecture and the surrounding landscape, forming a continuous sequence of ritual, architecture, and nature from the entrance and gathering areas, through the eulogies hall, and onward to the tranquil garden of burial.