The Drawers Building

The story

The Drawers Building — also called the 14-story building — is a multi-story residential building in the heart of Neighborhood Bet, at 9 Shimoni Street. It was designed by the architects Moshe Loufenfeld and Giora Gamerman and built in 1966, and was originally intended to be one of three buildings in a wider project in the neighborhood; in the end it was built alone. In the 1970s it made headlines as a symbol of modern construction in the heart of a desert city, and for decades it was the tallest residential building in Beersheba. Its prominent form gave it nicknames — “the cubes tower”, “the Tetris tower”, and in short “the Tetris” — because of the resemblance between its protruding masses and the shapes that are formed in the computer game. Its entrance hall is a tall flight of stairs, about fifteen meters wide, built of black stone, which contributes to a design bold in relation to the period. The building has fourteen floors and two elevators, and there is a division between them that is itself part of the design: one stops at the even floors and the other at the odd floors. The building was commended, together with other buildings in the city, within the Reynolds Prize awarded to the planners of Beersheba in 1970, and its photograph was published in the New York Times in an article about the city. Today most of its residents are students, because of its location in the heart of an area considered a student area, and its height and its form make it a landmark in the neighborhood.

• Brutalism
• People
• Beersheba