Zvi Hecker
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Zvi Hecker (; 31 May 1931 – 24 September 2023) was a Polish-born Israeli architect. His work is known for its emphasis on geometry and asymmetry.


Biography

Zvi Hecker was born as Tadeusz Hecker in
Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
, Poland. He grew up in Poland and
Samarkand Samarkand ( ; Uzbek language, Uzbek and Tajik language, Tajik: Самарқанд / Samarqand, ) is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central As ...
. He began his education in architecture at the Cracow University of Technology. He immigrated to Israel in 1950."Zvi Hecker"
Arcspace. Date: 7 March 2001, retrieved 24 October 2007.
There he studied architecture at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, graduating in 1955. At the Technion, Eldar Sharon was a classmate, and Alfred Neumann was their professor. Between 1955 and 1957, he studied
painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...
at the
Avni Institute of Art and Design Avni Institute of Art and Design is an Israeli art school located in Tel Aviv. History The Studia school (later Avni Institute) was established in 1936De La Fuente S:Black and white in color" '' The Jerusalem Post'' 30 May 2007. Accessed 2008-11- ...
, before beginning his career as an architect. Between 1957 and 1959, Hecker served in the
Combat Engineering Corps The Israeli Combat Engineering Corps (, ''Heil HaHandasa HaKravit'') is part of the Israel Defense Forces with responsibility for mobility assurance, road breaching, defense and fortifications, counter-mobility of enemy forces, construction and ...
of the
Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...
. Hecker died in his Berlin home on 24 September 2023, at the age of 92.


Architectural career

After his military service, he founded a firm with Eldar Sharon (until 1964) and Alfred Neumann (until 1966). The physical and economic conditions in Israel at the time, allowed them to complete a fair number of works in a relatively brief period of time, which brought international attention. Their joint works include the Mediterranean Sea Club in Achzib (1960–1961), Dubiner House (1963), the
Chaim Laskov Haim Laskov (; 1919 – 8 December 1982) was an Israeli public figure and the fifth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Biography Haim Laskov was born in Barysaw in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (present-day Belarus). He im ...
Officer Training School (1963–1967) Bahad 1, the main officer training school of the Israel Defense Forces, just later the
synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...
(1969–1971) at the same academy, and the
Bat Yam Bat Yam ( ) is a city on Israel's Mediterranean Sea coast, on the Central Coastal Plain just south of Tel Aviv. It is part of the Gush Dan metropolitan area and the Tel Aviv District. In , it had a population of . History British Mandate Bat Y ...
city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...
(1963–1969). Their designs shared aspects in common with the
metabolist movement was a post-war Japanese Biomimetic architecture, biomimetic architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural Megastructure (planning concept), megastructures with those of organic biological growth. It had its first international expo ...
, borrowing
metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...
ic shapes from nature for use in planning morphological structures. The
modularity Modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a system into varying ...
of these works, such as the Dubiner House, provided an architectural precedent for the
Habitat 67 Habitat 67, or simply Habitat, is a housing complex at Cité du Havre, on the Saint Lawrence River, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, designed by Israeli-Canadian- American architect Moshe Safdie. It originated in his master's thesis at the School of Ar ...
project by
Moshe Safdie Moshe Safdie (; born July 14, 1938) is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. He is well known for incorporating principles of socially responsible design throughout his six-decade career. His projects include cultural, ed ...
. Hecker resided in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
and Tel Aviv. He was involved in planning projects for the German Jewish community as well as other international projects.


Academic career

Hecker taught in Canada, the United States, Israel, and Austria at the
Université Laval (; English: ''Laval University)'' is a public research university in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The university traces its roots to the Séminaire de Québec, founded by François de Montmorency-Laval in 1663, making it the oldest institutio ...
,
University of Texas at Arlington The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA or UT Arlington) is a public research university in Arlington, Texas, United States. It is the second oldest university in the University of Texas System and was founded in 1895. It was in the Texas A& ...
,
Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...
,
Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricult ...
,
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is a public university, public research university located in Haifa, Israel. Established in 1912 by Jews under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, the Technion is the oldest university in the coun ...
, and the
University of Applied Arts Vienna The University of Applied Arts Vienna (, or informally just ''Die Angewandte'') is an arts university and institution of higher education in Vienna, the capital of Austria. It has had university status since 1970. History The predecessor of the ...
. Zvi Hecker wrote about his work periodically, co-authoring books with Sir Peter Cook,
John Hejduk John Quentin Hejduk (July 19, 1929 – July 8, 2000) was an American architect, artist and educator from New York City. Hejduk studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture, the University of Cincinnati, and the Harvard Graduate Sc ...
, and others.


Projects

The early projects of Zvi Hecker, designed in partnership with Sharon and Neumann, have architectural qualities that were developed later in his career. The officer school (
Bahad Bahad (, short for ''Bsis Hadrakha'' (), ''lit.'' Training base) is a military training base in the Israel Defense Forces. Each Bahad deals with a certain field, such as law enforcement or logistics. Generally, each Bahad belongs to a certain corp ...
1) was built to give a respectable living environment to soldiers in the
Negev The Negev ( ; ) or Naqab (), is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort town, resort city ...
desert, and special emphasis was given to the large spaces between the structures, in order to form a micro-environment there, separating the people inside from the harsh desert outskirts. Raw concrete was chosen because it did not require constant maintenance and renovation in light of the strong sandy winds. About the school, Hecker said: "The location of the base has a special relevance to the vision of
David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...
. To build such an important school in a place which isn't the center of the country – in my opinion, that's the positive side of the State of Israel". The academy was supplemented later with a synagogue, whose form was complementary and contrasting. The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture says of the architect's approach to its design, "Eschewing the right angles of international modernism, he turned to crystalline geometry found in nature .. Another of the Zvi Hecker's projects in partnership, the Bat Yam City Hall shows the recurrence of geometrical invention that exists throughout his work. One architectural significance of the Bat Yam City Hall- its formal concept, is that it is an inverted
pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...
. It is linked to other works of architecture such as
Boston City Hall Boston City Hall is the seat of local government in the United States, city government of Boston, Massachusetts. It includes the offices of the List of mayors of Boston, mayor of Boston and the Boston City Council. The current hall was built in ...
through this form, in addition to their program, similar materials, and time period. The building is patterned on a diagonal grid with concrete, which provides both its structure and aesthetics. The importance of this building was recognized in 1975 with perspective and section illustrations on a
postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail). Then the stamp is affixed to the f ...
in the Architecture in Israel series. As of 2003, Bat Yam City Hall was removed of its signature light shafts, rather than having them renovated. This was because of a perceived structural instability due to weathering over time. Of this removal Dr. Ami Ran wrote, "From an architectural standpoint, removing them is equivalent to dousing the Statue of Liberty's torch." Among several projects for
memorial A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects such as home ...
s, Zvi Hecker designed the solemn ''Page Memorial'' (1996) with Micha Ullmann and
Eyal Weizman Eyal Weizman MBE FBA (; born 1970) is a British Israeli architect. He is the director of the research agency Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London where he is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and a founding director ...
. This site-specific memorial commemorates the Jewish community of
Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Berlin-Mitte, Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in ...
, and their Lindenstrasse synagogue which was designed in 1891 by architects Cremer & Wolffenstein. What was once one of the largest religious buildings in Berlin, with a capacity of 1800; was ruined by the Nazis in the 1938
Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...
pogrom A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of Massacre, massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century Anti-Jewis ...
. On the original floor plan, the benches of the synagogue were recreated in concrete, and where the bimah stood, trees are now planted. The designers conceived of the benches as sentences on the pages of the
Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...
.


Architectural style

Zvi Hecker architecture has continued to emphasize
geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...
and modularity, but with increasing
asymmetry Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in pre ...
. Ramot Polin (1972–75) is a rare prefabricated apartment complex with 720 non-rectangular components. The apartments were expanded later, incorporating more cubic rather than pentagonal components. The design idea of this neighborhood may seem to be the more purely geometrical, however it is likened to a chemical structure, and in plan view to an open hand, and a leaf- therefore imparting it with metaphorical qualities. More examples of advanced geometry in Hecker's work are the Spiral Apartment House in
Ramat Gan Ramat Gan (, ) is a city in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, located east of the municipality of Tel Aviv, and is part of the Gush Dan, Gush Dan metropolitan area. It is home to a Diamond Exchange District (one of the world's major diamond exch ...
, (1981–1989), and the Heinz-Galinski-Schule (1992–1995) in Berlin, noted for their high degree of complexity. The Heinz-Galinski-Schule won Zvi Hecker the ''Deutscher Kritikerpreis'' in 1995- it was stated that the decision of the jury was based on their appreciation of the "expressive geometry of his construction." The Spiral Apartment House is located adjacent to his earlier Dubiner house, providing a juxtaposition of two important moments in his career. The work of Zvi Hecker has been compared to that of
Antoni Gaudí Antoni Gaudí i Cornet ( , ; ; 25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926) was a Catalans, Catalan architect and designer from Spain, widely known as the greatest exponent of Catalan ''Modernisme''. Gaudí's works have a style, with most located in Barc ...
, for expressiveness and expanding of architectural ideas. More of his later works are the Jewish community center in
Duisburg Duisburg (; , ) is a city in the Ruhr metropolitan area of the western States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lying on the confluence of the Rhine (Lower Rhine) and the Ruhr (river), Ruhr rivers in the center of the Rhine-Ruh ...
(1996–1999), and with Rafi Segal, the
Palmach Museum The Palmach Museum () is a museum located in Ramat Aviv, Israel dedicated to the Palmach, the strike-force of the pre-state underground Haganah defense organization, which was later integrated into the Israel Defense Forces. History Opened in 200 ...
in
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...
(1995–2000). The Duisburg Jewish community center is located on a park, the ''Garten der Erinnerung'' designed by
Dani Karavan Daniel "Dani" Karavan (; 7 December 1930 – 29 May 2021) was an Israeli sculptor best known for site specific memorials and monuments which merge into the environment. Biography Daniel (Dani) Karavan was born in Tel Aviv. His father Abrah ...
. The community center shares a similar concept to the ''Page Memorial'' in its likening to the open pages of a book, and symbolically the
Torah The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...
of Moses. The Palmach Museum has an angular zig-zag plan positioned around the preservation of trees on the site. It is clad in a local sandstone that was found in excavations for the project. It was exhibited at the
Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...
.


Museum exhibits

Hecker was the subject of a solo exhibition at the
Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...
in 1976. He had solo exhibitions at the
Tel Aviv Museum of Art The Tel Aviv Museum of Art ( ''Muzeon Tel Aviv Leomanut'') is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of modern and contemporary art both from Israel and around the world. History The Tel Aviv ...
in the 1980s and in 1996.Zvi Hecker, Mordechai Omer. "Sunflower", Tel Aviv Museum of Art. 1996. He also took part in the ''Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture'' at the
Jewish Museum Berlin The Jewish Museum Berlin (''Jüdisches Museum Berlin'') was opened in 2001 and is the largest Jewish museum in Europe. On of floor space, the museum presents the history of the Jews in Germany from the Middle Ages to the present day, with new foc ...
in 2005,"Jewish Identity in Architecture"
Jewish Museum, Berlin. 4 March 2005.
and participated in the
Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...
on a number of occasions.


References


External links


Zvi Hecker , Architect , Berlin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hecker, Zvi 1931 births 2023 deaths Israeli architects Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent Polish emigrants to Israel Jewish architects Cremer & Wolffenstein Tadeusz Kościuszko University of Technology alumni Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni People from Kraków Academic staff of Université Laval University of Texas at Arlington faculty Washington University in St. Louis faculty Iowa State University faculty Academic staff of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Academic staff of the University of Applied Arts Vienna