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The Green Spine
Infrastructure that grows like a forest, not a line
Role:Urban Design Team Member (via Gilad–Chief Architects)
Scope: Urban Masterplanning & Design
Location: Holon, Israel
Site Area: 106 dunams (approx. 26 acres)
Client: Holon Municipality
Context
In the center of Holon -between residential blocks, commercial districts, and industrial remnants - lay a forgotten strip of land: 106 dunams of residual space, disconnected and dormant.
But underneath that dormancy was potential - not for development, but for regeneration.
The municipality envisioned a spine, but we proposed something more:
not a path to move through, but a system that could absorb, hold, and nourish.
Strategy
The Green Spine was designed as a living infrastructure:
a multi-functional corridor that filters water, collects shade, invites slowness, and amplifies life.
Rather than organize the space by program, we organized it by flows:
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Seasonal water retention
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Pedestrian and cycling routes
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Educational agricultural zones
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Urban biodiversity corridors
Each segment of the spine responded to its own microclimate and community adjacency.
Rather than one park, the spine is many ecosystems - stitched together by rhythm.
Material & Atmosphere
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Native vegetation and bioswales designed to clean and slow runoff
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Unpaved paths, shaded berms, reclaimed wood seating
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Passive structures for community gardening, outdoor teaching, and rest
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Integration of local soil dynamics and topographic nuance
This was not landscape as background. It was infrastructure as invitation.
Role & Experience
Within the urban design team, my focus centered on the integration of experience and function:
ensuring that each element would not only perform ecologically, but feel inviting, soft, and intuitively human.
I contributed to the development of spatial sequences that alternate between open gathering spaces and intimate natural enclaves.
Planting strategies were selected for resilience and sensory diversity.
Movement was planned not for speed, but for presence.
The spine doesn’t lead -it listens.
Outcome
The Green Spine redefined what a civic space can be in an age of ecological uncertainty and social fragmentation.
It proposed an urban space not as a finished design, but as an evolving ecological system - one that learns, absorbs, adapts.
Not just green, but regenerative - capable of filtering water, hosting biodiversity, and rebuilding depleted soils.
Not just walkable, but experiential - inviting slowness, exploration, and moments of rest within a rhythmic urban loop.
Not just for people - but for multiple species and overlapping flows: of air, water, pollinators, schoolchildren, and commuters.
In place of a static park, it offered a performative landscape:
one that could flex with weather, respond to time, and shift with civic needs.
It is a new kind of commons - both civic and wild.
It is not a park. It is a city’s slow exhale - held in green.