Yaelim Quarter

The story

The Yaelim Quarter was the first quarter of Arad, and it was planned by the architect Ilana Bernzon Elrod. It is named after Nahal Yaelim, which flows near the city, and its nickname is “the patio houses”. The building here was an attempt to find an architectural solution for dense construction in desert conditions. The building is built in a pyramidal form, so that every apartment has an open space of its own: on the ground a small garden, and on the floors a patio that opens onto the roof of the apartment beneath it. In the evening, after the living rooms had heated up all day — and in those years there was no air conditioning — a pleasant outdoor space was created in the patio. This space also allowed a family that grew to expand without moving to another apartment. The entrance to the apartments is along a shaded inner passage and open stairwells, and the parking of all the residents is concentrated at the entrance to the passage. Bernzon Elrod joined the team that planned Arad after she returned from Brazil, where she was a member of the planning team of Brasília under the direction of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer. The street names in most of the neighborhoods of Arad are each tied to one theme; Yaelim is one of the exceptions, together with the first neighborhoods and the center neighborhoods.

• Architecture and planning
• Development towns
• Arad