The Stone Administration Building

 

The Stone Administration Building was designed by the architects Arieh Elhanani and Nissan Canaan in 1966, in the style of Industrial Minimalism characteristic of the period. It resembles office buildings of the time – such as the Tel Aviv municipality built a year earlier – whose characteristic features included a large balcony supported by columns rising from the ground floor. The light, sandcolored façade of the Stone Building has repeated white elements, including pyramids in the bottom part of the windows and a simple pattern of vertical and horizontal shading elements, which emphasize modesty, simplicity and a focus on functionality.

 

The building is located close to the Institute’s main entrance gate and projects official, matter-of-fact respectability. In the spirit of functionality, the monumental staircase that originally led from the street and the lower entrance to the upper lobby was later dismantled and replaced by a passenger drop-off lane for Institute visitors. The pyramid motif of the windows repeats itself in the four pyramids that allow light into the drop-off area from the roof, which itself serves as an external balcony to the lobby on the mezzanine floor above. This balcony, the building’s central focus, links up with the parking lot used by people working in the building and by its visitors.

 

The spacious mezzanine floor, with design elements characteristic of the period, has a relief wall by Naftali Bezem, indoor and outdoor seating and external rolldown shades that protect the windowed lobby from sunlight. The shades, installed when the building’s entrance was changed, were placed between prominent rectangular columns and beams. The beams, protruding from the columns, have been deliberately accentuated, while the columns are themselves separated from the contour of the building, providing an open façade for the glass that defines the lobby, so as to impart a sensation of lightness and a hovering feeling for the large mass of the five office floors above. These upper floors are accessed by a staircase of brown terrazzo, which also, as it reaches the lobby, creates a sensation of hovering above the lobby’s floor, whose greenish terrazzo contrasts with the brown of the staircase.

 

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