Architect turned film-maker Yael Melamede presents us with this insightful, though perhaps faintly indulgent, portrait of her mother, Israeli architect Ada Karmi-Melamede. With her brother Ram Karmi, Karmi-Melamede designed the supreme court of Israel building in Jerusalem in the early 90s, and then had a brilliant solo practice, creating Ben Gurion Airport.
Karmi-Melamede’s ethos is to establish buildings that take root in their allotted space, an “architecture of the ground and of the sky” – rather than replicate the endless glass towers of first-world cities which could be put down anywhere. Another witty maxim of hers is: “The cheapest building material is the light.” She aimed to do away with her brother’s fashionable brutalism and concrete, a conflict which appears to have resulted in a fascinating dialogue (or possibly conflict) within the supreme court building itself.
