Ram Karmi

Ram Karmi (Hebrew: רם כרמי; b. 1931) is a leading Israeli architect. He is head of the Tel Aviv-based Ram Karmi Architects company, and is known for his Brutalist style.

Biography

Ram Karmi was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Tel Aviv. Karmi served in the Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and became one of the first soldiers in the Nahal. He studied architecture at the Technion, Haifa and Architectural Association School of Architecture, London in 1951–56. His father, Dov Karmi, was also an architect and won the Israel Prize in 1957. His sister, the architect Ada Karmi-Melamede, was also awarded the Israel Prize for architecture, in 2007. He is married to Rivka Karmi-Edry with whom he has a son and two daughters. He also has two sons and a daughter from a previous marriage.

Architectural career

The Supreme Court of Israel

Early in his career Ram Karmi was employed in his father's office where he worked on plans for the Knesset along with the design competition winner Joseph Klarwein. Karmi planned the Negev Center, Beersheba in 1960 and El Al building, Tel Aviv in 1963. He continued his architectural work while lecturing at the Technion, designing the Amal school in Tel Aviv and the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station.

According to Karmi, after the 1967 Six-Day War, the changed atmosphere in Israeli society caused him to re-think his brutalist style. In 1974, Karmi voluntarily became the chief architect in the Housing and Construction Minister of Israel, a position he held until 1979, and worked to re-design the near-ubiquitous public housing projects in Israel. In 1986 he participated in an international competition to design the Supreme Court of Israel compound, winning it along with his sister's architecture company. The compound, designed by Karmi, opened in 1992. New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote of Karmi's design, "the sharpness of the Mediterranean architectural tradition and the dignity of the law are here married with remarkable grace." Beginning in 2007, Karmi was the architect in charge of renovating the Habima Theatre.

Academic career

Karmi taught at the Technion, Haifa between 1964 and 1994. He lectured at MIT, Columbia University and the University of Houston.

Criticism and controversy

The Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, which Karmi designed along with the architects Tzvi Komet and Ya'el Rothschild, has been criticized over the years for being a difficult to navigate bloated structure which also destroyed the neighborhood it was built in, despite numerous advertising campaigns and improvements. In an interview, Haim Avigal, the CEO of the station from 2005, downplayed the navigation complaints, but said that "if I caught the architect who designed this building, I'd beat him up". In 2010, his renovation of Habimah Theater, which is still under way after three years, has been fiercely criticized.

Awards

Ram Karmi won the following awards:

• Israel Prize, 2002 - for architecture.
• Rechter Prize:
  • 1967 – for the Negev Center in Beersheba;
  • 1999 – for the Children's Memorial (Yad LaYeled) in the Ghetto Fighters' House.
• Reinholds Prize, 1969 – for a mixed residential/commercial project in Beersheba.
• Rokach Prize:
  • 1965 – for the El Al building in Tel Aviv;
  • 1970 – for residential buildings in Be'eri St., Tel Aviv.

Published works

• Lyric Architecture (2001). Israeli Ministry of Defense.

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients