Over the past decade, the number of high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv has increased by 50%, and this number will now double over the next decade. Tel Aviv's skyline, which has changed much in recent years, will change even more dramatically, as high-rise towers overlook the proudly preserved smaller buildings of the pre-state city.
Construction of the Shalom Tower, Tel Aviv's first skyscraper, began in 1959 and was completed in 1965. The tower had 31 floors and was 120 meters high. In recent years, three more floors of apartments have been added. In those years, the 13-story El Al building on Ben Yehuda Street and the 17-story Hilton Hotel on the waterfront were considered high-rise buildings.
It took a long time before the Shalom Tower lost its status as the tallest building in Israel. Developers in Tel Aviv built slightly higher in the 1970s and 1980s, with Beit Klal (21 floors), Sheraton Hotel (22), Amot Investments Tower (24), Dizengoff Center (24), and Kibbutz Artzi Tower (26) lower The much famous Shalom Tower. The 29-storey Isrotel Tower near the waterfront was the closest, but new peaks were accessible to the east along the Ayalon Highway. In 1999 the Azrieli Center's circular tower (49 floors) and triangular tower (48 floors) were completed, raising the standard for high-rise buildings in Israel.
Two years later, the 40-storey City Tower (Leonardo) in the Ramat Gan Diamond Exchange area was completed and a new rivalry between Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan began. Shortly thereafter the 68-storey Moshe Aviv Tower in Ramat Gan was completed, which remained Israel's tallest building until 2017 when the Azrieli Sarona Tower in Tel Aviv was completed. Although the Azrieli Sarona has only 61 floors, it is 238 meters tall, compared to the Moshe Aviv Tower's 235 metres.
Both buildings are located near the Marhaba Tower in Givatayim, on the border with Tel Aviv, which consists of 60 floors and is 220 meters high. But today's high-rise buildings are expected to diminish in the next few years.
Today's tall buildings will look less tall tomorrow
The ten tallest buildings in Israel today are likely to be ranked between 10 and 20 in the next decade, depending on the pace of progress in development and construction. “It's not really exciting to talk about 100 floors,” says Israeli architect Avner Yashar, owner of Yashar Architects, one of Israel's leading architecture firms, which has designed, among other things, the Landmark and Da Vinci towers in Tel Aviv. Aviv.
The biggest changes in the coming years will focus on several locations. First, there is the line in north-central Tel Aviv overlooking the Ayalon Expressway, which already includes the three Azrieli Center towers, the Downtown Towers (50 floors) and the Hatzerim Towers (46 and 40 floors). The most prominent towers that will join them are the Azrieli Spiral Tower (91 floors) and Beit Egged (65 floors).
The second district in Tel Aviv is Kirya and Sarona, which already has the Da Vinci Tower (44 floors) and Azrieli Sarona (61 floors). A 60-storey tower in southeast Kiria (final height not yet determined) and an 80-storey Kirin Hakiria Tower are in planning.
The third area in Tel Aviv slated for a major office tower development is the former industrial zone along Yigal Allon Street, on the eastern side of the Ayalon Expressway. Already in this area are the 40-storey Alon Twin Towers, the 47-storey Electra Tower, and the modest and distinctive 27-storey ToHa 1 Tower. They will be joined by the 80-storey ToHa2 Tower and the 65-storey Tara Tower (not completed).
The fourth site for high-rise development is the Ramat Gan Diamond Exchange District, where Moshe Aviv's tower will be dwarfed by new developments. “There is no person who is serious about planning and politics who does not understand that if there is one place in Israel that will become an international business center – it is the Diamond Exchange area. It is suitable in terms of size, location and proximity to public transportation,” says Ben Mayost, director of strategic projects in the Ramat Gan municipality. “There is no place like this even in Tel Aviv, and in the next decade, it will be difficult to recognize this rapidly changing area, where the new generation has overshadowed the previous generation.”
At least seven projects of 88 floors and above are currently being built in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Givatayim: Diamond Exchange Tower 1 (120 floors); Vertical City Tower 1 (106); Bein Arim (Between the Cities) (100); Azrieli Spiral Tower (91); Diamond Stock Exchange Tower 2 (88); Vertical City 2 (88); and beyond (88).
From offices and high-rise residential buildings to mixed-use towers
Today, residential towers, especially towers with expensive apartments, are accepted in Israel as a luxury lifestyle option. However, this is a relatively new phenomenon and was foreign to the nation's “founding fathers.” Previous generations of towers in Israel were mainly used for offices and hotels. The pioneering building in luxury residential life was the 26-storey Gan Ha'ir, completed in 1981 by the City Council in what is now Rabin Square. The 24-storey Dizengoff Center tower was completed in 1986, but it was only in the 1990s that the market saw the full potential of residential towers and high-rise buildings such as the Basel, Opera and Tel Aviv Towers. It was not until the 2000s, when the three Akirov Towers on Pinkas Street were built and Park Tzameret was built, that residential towers began to be integrated into Israel's planning and design landscape.
But the future, the buds of which can be seen today, holds more developments for the use of high-rise buildings in Israel. Today the tower no longer needs to be identified as an office building, or a residential building, but can have a mix of uses. There could be commercial space on the ground floor, offices above, with the upper floors used for apartments. The buds of this can already be seen in the Moshe Aviv Tower, where the upper 12 floors have been designated as apartments. In Shalom Tower, three residential floors were added. In the south of the Diamond Bourse area, there are administrative and public buildings, and 1,750 housing units will be built there.
But the future will bring a different kind of versatility, Yashar explains. His office is currently designing “Migdal 120” – a 120-storey, 520-meter-tall building to be constructed by D-Mall near Tel Aviv Central Station Savedor next to Arlozorov Street. This is one of three high-rise buildings being developed near the Diamond Exchange, while the other two have only 88 and 77 floors.
“The accepted method for very tall towers is to divide them into several towers one above the other, in this case three out of 40 floors,” Yasar explains. “The problem is the elevators – the first 40 floors are occupied as usual by express elevators to the Sky Lobby on the 41st floor, where the People change elevators for the next 40 floors to the next lobby, and there they change elevators again and in the Sky Lobby will create public areas, shops and cafes, a kind of mixed use that does not exist today. “It takes 100 to get to your apartment in a tower,” Yashar explains One floor takes longer than reaching a 30-storey building.” “In such cases, public areas are also created at an elevated location. If you want to refresh yourself a little, you don't have to come down. The tower is very big and a lot of people live in it, so you can also have a small break, a supermarket, a café and all kinds of services that the tower can offer in addition to what we are used to today.”
According to Moshe Tzur, owner of Moshe Tzur Architects and Town Planners, one of Israel's leading architecture firms, which designed the Azrieli Sarona, Amot Atrium and Midtown and is a partner in the design of the Azrieli Spiral Tower, the new towers are “a kind of vertical city that can contain All types of uses, the upper floors are usually reserved for apartments or luxury hotels, and in the middle floors there can be sheltered residences, rental apartments and offices, and in the lower floors there are commercial spaces and what is in between. Also in the different parts of the tower there are public floors and uses to serve the community that uses the building, Eventually you'll see a city or neighborhood converging into a 100-story tower.
“You can see this tower as a machine. There are sets of elevators that serve each part, there are 'shuttle' elevators that move people quickly between the lobby and the welfare areas and there are local elevators that reach the floors. It's like the main street of the city that is divided into subsidiary streets, even You get to the parking lot, you won't take a single elevator that takes you up 100 floors, and you'll never reach the top.
parking? Forget about the new towers
Better forget the underground parking lots under existing high-rise buildings. The new towers, which will be twice their size, will not include such parking.
“All new projects depend on people not arriving by car,” Yashar says. “If it were cars, not only would they have to allocate a lot of parking, they would also have to allocate roads, and there is no inclination to do that. On the contrary. The big towers in the Diamond Exchange area are not based on Adding roads to what exists today the entire scheme of the Diamond Exchange area radically reduces the number of cars as there are four cars per thousand square metres, which is nothing. Access to these places will be by scooters, bicycles and public transport.”
All professionals agree that public transportation is the weakest link in the story. It is easy to set modest parking standards, but supporting them with advanced public transportation represents the real challenge, and the state, currently, is unable to meet this challenge. Bus and rail services are not meeting demand, and light rail and metro are lagging behind. The result: we may reach a situation where new mega-towers are occupied but without adequate transportation support. “The gap stems from the fact that reducing parking is an administrative decision, while developing public transportation is a planning and implementation challenge on another level,” Yasar says.
On the other hand, Tzur takes a different approach. “In the tower where you live, work and welcome guests – you don’t leave it, you don’t leave the car out of the parking lot,” he says. “This is in contrast to the old theories of zoning, which is based on the separation of places of residence, work and leisure that require roads, infrastructure, carbon emissions and pollution,” he says. As long as the uses are made within the neighborhood or in the tower, there is no need to use vehicles and the number of employees who do not live there is small anyway.”
Whatever the case, concern still exists, especially regarding the Diamond Bourse area. The mayor of Ramat Gan is aware of this and says: “Just as we could not have imagined 10 or 15 years ago that there would be motorcycles and electric bicycles, I believe that reality will find a solution to the problem. However, the directorate I lead deals with innovating transportation solutions, some of which are as familiar as buses.” Small ones are self-driving, some of them are unique.” He declined to identify these unique solutions, but said they are examining them and will publish their results within six months.
Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on May 14, 2024.
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