Yale helps to create Middle East "peace
park"
Students and faculty including Professors Alan
Plattus and Diana Balmori from the School of Architecture participated in a
charette with planners from Jordan and Israel in May to discuss the creation of
the first cross-border Peace Park to be established in the Middle East. The
team visited the location of the proposed park, about six miles south of the
southern tip of the Sea of Galilee, at the confluence of the Yarmouk and Jordan
rivers. The park area will include the former Rotenberg hydroelectric power station
and the "Three Bridges" site, a historical crossing point of the
River Jordan, where a 2,000-year-old Roman bridge, an Ottoman Railway bridge,
and a British Mandate road bridge still span the river today. No person, train,
or vehicle has crossed the river at this site since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Organizers hoped that the charette would result in a vision for revitalizing
dilapidated buildings, converting the former power station into a visitor's
center, and renovating the bridges for future use. The finished project will be
a trans-boundary protected area straddling the international border between
Israel and Jordan.
Student designs showcased at ICFF
Architecture students from Professor Massimo
Scolari's advanced studio participated in a juried competition as part of the
20th annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in May. The
display consisted of student-designed furniture prototypes developed as
solutions to a problem formulated in Scolari's fall 2007 studio, which centers
on the problem of designing a scholar's center for the funerary complex of King
Djoser at Saqqara, Egypt (ca. 2650 BC). As part of the assignment each student
created and fabricated a full-scale prototype of a chair to "furnish"
his or her building. Yale was one of only four schools asked to take part in
the 2008 ICFF; also participating were the California College of the Arts,
Savannah College of Art and Design, and New York's School of Visual Arts.
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