I was born in Bogota on January 26th 1941, to parents that were lucky to escape Poland just before the war. They carry with them their shtetl way of live and their love for Zion, leaving me to choose either to grow under my mother constant protection from the gentile world that surround me or to fulfill their dream, and emigrate to Israel.
In 1965, towards the end of my Architect M.A. studied, I meet an envoy of the Jerusalem Municipality who was searching for professional in South America to enroll them at the Jerusalem Municipality’s City Engineers Department so, a year later, I was already working towards the Jerusalem 1984 Master Plan team under Professor Hashimshoni but, as a result of the Six Day War, the city boundaries were expanded and we started the completely new 2,000 Jerusalem Master Plan that, as it happened, would be the last comprehensive and professional city’s Master Plan.
Resulting of the extraordinary development Jerusalem was going through and, in order to reject UNESCO and other institutions bias claims that the city was changing its historical character, Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolek created the Jerusalem Old City and its surrounding’s Planning Office under the most prominent Israeli architects Arieh Sharon and Anatol Brtskus, for the purpose of preparing a planning scheme, check the impact of new buildings in and around the Old City as well as to discuss them periodically within a forum of world wide architects like Bruno Zevi, Richard Khan and, for me, a challenging experience.
While reviewing some designs in caffe Atara with Henz Julisburger, a German architect that worked, as well, at the municipality, David Mir approached us and said he was looking for architects to design the Ephrata neighborhood (now Har Homa) and the Rose Garden house project. This became the trigger to open our private office, a partnership that lasted from 1969, after ending my 3-year contract with the Municipality, till 2005.
For two new immigrant architects with no political connections to survive is challenging as, my partner use to say:” the country was already split among those of the Palmach”. So, with hope and luck we survived, experiences that I detailed in my 2022 Legacy Book.