Architecture is Made for People, A Holistic-Phenomenological Approach to Architecture: A Case Study of Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, Israel

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present my interpretation of the holistic-phenomenological worldview in practice. This study demonstrates how this approach, as well as the planning process that I followed (a process fundamentally different from conventional ones) was implemented in a residential neighborhood I designed and built in the social, economic, and physical structure of the collective known in Israel as a ‘kibbutz’. The intention is to raise a broad public discussion and pose a challenge to 21st-century architecture regarding how to intervene in a moral and human way within an existing environment, urban or natural, which must be respected and preserved, when integrating within it a new contemporary architecture.