David Resnick

David Resnick was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1924 to a family that had emigrated from Ukraine.[2] He was raised in a secular Zionist household, and his path to Israel was shaped by that background.[3] He studied architecture at the National Faculty of Architecture at the University of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro and, while still a student, worked in Oscar Niemeyer's office on various projects.[2] That experience contributed to the modernist formation later associated with the plastic forms and elegance of his own architecture.[2]

Resnick and his wife Rachel, whom he met through the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist youth organization, immigrated to Israel together in 1949.[3] On arrival, he joined Kibbutz Ein HaShofet before moving to Tel Aviv to begin his professional life in Israel.[2] He found work in the office of Ze'ev Rechter, where he participated in projects including Tel Aviv's Mann Auditorium, Gan Yaakov, and the Maoz Aviv neighborhood.[2] In 1955 he moved to Jerusalem and began working with architect Heinz Rau.[2] In 1958 he opened his own independent practice, which became the platform for his most celebrated work.[4][2]

Resnick's independent career was centered largely in Jerusalem, a city whose sensitive skyline, ancient stone, and layered history presented unusual demands on an architect working in a modernist idiom. Over roughly 45 years, he designed more than 150 projects and more than 2,000 housing units, spanning public institutions, religious buildings, hotels, memorials, housing, university campuses, and neighborhood planning.[2]

Early Jerusalem Works

Among his first significant Jerusalem commissions was the Givat Ram campus synagogue at the Hebrew University, designed with Heinz Rau. Ynet dates the design to 1956, while Xnet's project chronology lists 1957.[2][5] The building, often called "the Dome," features a thin concrete dome 18 meters in diameter, cast in a single piece with a thickness varying between 6 and 12 centimeters.[2] Plastered white rather than clad in Jerusalem stone, its profile appears to float above the ground.[2] Resnick wrote about the building: "Before my eyes I saw a structure by the wayside, like shelter for a wayfarer."[5] The design earned Resnick and Rau a Rechter Prize.[2]

The Van Leer Institute is listed as having been built in 1957, while the Amir Center on King George Street is dated to 1958.[1] The Amir Center, also known as the Shufersal Building, was conceived as the first of three proposed nine-story buildings; the planning commission restricted it to seven stories, and the other towers were never built.[6] Completed in 1961, it used prefabricated components that allowed an entire floor to be completed in a day, aided by a specialist crane brought from Sweden.[6] The construction team received the Kaplan Prize for technological innovation in 1963.[6] V-shaped pillars opened the ground floor and framed a view from King George Street toward the Old City, while four internal courtyards provided heating and ventilation for apartments considered luxurious at the time.[6]

Other Jerusalem works included the Jerar Bachar Center (1960–1961), Beit Hanoa'ar—the Youth Institute—(1961), and Beit Agron (1967).[1]

Yad Kennedy

Resnick won a limited design competition for Yad Kennedy, the memorial to U.S. President John F. Kennedy established in the Jerusalem Hills in 1966, three years after Kennedy's assassination.[7] His proposal resembled a felled tree trunk, symbolizing the life of a 46-year-old man cut short.[7] Prime Minister Levi Eshkol inaugurated the memorial on July 4, 1966.[7]

The elliptical plaza is patterned with alternating dark and light granulite strips that rise into columns and dark window openings around the memorial hall.[7] Inside, a bronze relief of Kennedy's face stands near a memorial flame; a skylight directly above the flame suggests smoke rising toward the heavens.[7] The columns rise 7.25 meters and frame views of the surrounding landscape.[7] The memorial was conceived as an abstract work open to individual interpretation rather than as a didactic monument imposing a single message.[7] In contrast with the heavy, dark concrete memorials common in Israel at the time, it demonstrated that a concrete-intensive Brutalist approach could produce an interior that felt light rather than oppressive.[7]

Mount Scopus Campus

After Jerusalem's reunification following the 1967 war, Resnick joined the architectural team assembled to rehabilitate and expand the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus, which had been largely abandoned since 1948 and stood as an enclave in Jordanian-held territory.[8] The larger project team included Resnick, Shmuel Shaked, Ram Karmi, Haim Katzef, Benjamin Idelson, Gershon Tzafor, and Yaakov Rechter.[8] A master plan prepared by Resnick, Shaked, Karmi, and Katzef is dated to 1970.[2]

The design challenge was to fit the university's mass into Jerusalem's sensitive skyline without diminishing the site's natural beauty, while allowing the institution to function and retain appropriate prominence.[9] Resnick is credited with the campus Education building.[9] He described Mount Scopus as "the acropolis of the Jewish people, a symbol of the Cultural awakening of the Jewish people."[1] Student residences at Mount Scopus are also listed among his works and dated to 1970.[2]

In 1997, Resnick was listed among the architects and planners of a Givat Ram campus master plan approved by the Hebrew University's Program Committee, alongside development consultant D. Wind.[10]

The Hyatt Regency Hotel

Resnick designed the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Mount Scopus—now the Dan Jerusalem—after an earlier proposal for a large hotel tower met strong public opposition and was shelved.[8] His replacement was a stepped, 11-floor building on a site of approximately 30 dunams, with roughly 500 rooms in interwoven square wings surrounding open or covered courtyards.[8] The Hyatt Regency and nearby Brigham Young University campus were completed in 1987, and the university commission earned Resnick his second Rechter Prize.[1][2]

Urban Planning and Housing

Resnick also worked at the neighborhood scale. At Hatzor HaGlilit, he planned for a Gur Hasidic community in a project dated to 1972.[9][2] Conceived as an alternative to standardized development-town housing, Kiryat Hasidim used two- to three-story buildings arranged around inner courtyards and a central neighborhood center.[2]

Other Notable Projects

The Van Leer Institute and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities buildings in Jerusalem were designed with Shimon Powsner and are dated to 1962 in Xnet's project chronology.[2] The Hazor Antiquities Museum at Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar is listed as a 1964 project.[2] The Jerusalem Soldiers' House dates from the mid-1960s, while the 1978 Yad LaBanim House used stone and gold-colored aluminum pyramids in place of the straight, clean lines of the adjacent Soldiers' House.[11] Resnick also designed Israel's embassy in Brazil, dated to 1977, and worked on the Ben-Gurion University campus.[3][2]

Resnick designed the Israel Pavilion for Expo '67 in Montreal in partnership with A. Sharon.[4] He separately received a Progressive Architecture award for an Israeli pavilion at an international exhibition in New York.[2]

Teaching

Alongside private practice, Resnick taught architecture at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology—and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.[1] He remained engaged with Bezalel's architecture department into his eighties and continued attending student project presentations.[2]

Resnick's output encompassed religious, educational, commemorative, residential, diplomatic, and cultural projects. Principal works documented in the research record include:

• Givat Ram Campus Synagogue ("The Dome"), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with Heinz Rau, 1956–1957[2][5]
• Van Leer Institute and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem; sources list 1957 for the institute and 1962 for the joint project with Shimon Powsner[1][2]
• Amir Center (Shufersal Building), King George Street, Jerusalem, designed 1958 and completed 1961[6]
• Jerar Bachar Center, Jerusalem, 1960–1961[1]
• Beit Hanoa'ar (Youth Institute), Jerusalem, 1961[1]
• Hazor Antiquities Museum, Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar, 1964[2]
• Jerusalem Soldiers' House, mid-1960s[11]
• Yad Kennedy, Jerusalem Hills, 1966[7]
• Beit Agron, Jerusalem, 1967[1]
• Hebrew University Mount Scopus Campus, 1970 master plan; Education building credited to Resnick[9][2]
• Student Residences, Mount Scopus, 1970[2]
• Kiryat Hasidim Neighborhood, Hatzor HaGlilit, 1972[2]
• Israel Embassy in Brazil, 1977[2]
• Yad LaBanim House, Jerusalem, 1978[11]
• Brigham Young University Campus, Jerusalem, 1987[1][2]
• Hyatt Regency Hotel (Dan Jerusalem), Mount Scopus, 1987[1][8]
• Givat Ram Campus Master Plan, Hebrew University, 1997[10]
• Israel Pavilion, Expo '67, Montreal, with A. Sharon[4]
• Ben-Gurion University Campus[3]

Resnick died in Jerusalem in November 2012 at the age of 88.[2] He received the Israel Prize for architecture in 1995.[1][12] His other honors included two Rechter Prizes—for the Givat Ram synagogue and the Brigham Young University campus—the Association of Architects' honorary award, the Jerusalem Prize for the Arts, a Progressive Architecture award, the Yakir Yerushalayim honor, and the Teddy Kollek decoration.[2] In 2006, he was inducted as an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects.[3]

Architectural historian Zvi Efrat described Resnick as a "Jerusalem modernist," noting his characteristic elegance and what Efrat called "Niemeyer plasticity."[2] His international modernist formation, adapted to the particular conditions of Jerusalem, gave his work a distinctive register: bold in structural concept but attentive to landscape, and monumental in program while careful with scale.

Resnick expressed his sense of purpose directly: "Ever since I immigrated to Israel I had a single goal: to be a bolt in the wonderful machine that is the state of Israel. To be a small bolt, but one without which the machine would not be the way it is today."[1] His work ranged from the floating dome of the Givat Ram synagogue to the stepped, stone-clad Dan Jerusalem Hotel and the elliptical columns of Yad Kennedy.[2][8] His contributions to Mount Scopus also joined modern campus planning with a site he regarded as a symbol of Jewish cultural renewal.[1][9]

His teaching at the Technion and Bezalel extended his influence beyond his buildings. His continued involvement with Bezalel student presentations into his eighties demonstrated a sustained commitment to architectural education.[1][2]

Resnick has been described as one of Israel's founding architects.[1] Arriving in 1949, soon after independence, he worked across the state's formative decades, from institutional buildings of the 1950s and 1960s through post-1967 campus construction and later housing and neighborhood projects such as Kiryat Hasidim.[1][2]

The Amir Center on King George Street became the clearest example of critical ambivalence surrounding Resnick's work. Completed in 1961, it was a technical achievement that used prefabricated components to complete a floor in a day and earned its construction team the Kaplan Prize for technological innovation.[6] Its V-shaped pillars, internal courtyards, and view toward the Old City reflected deliberate urban planning.[6] The building later deteriorated as balconies were enclosed or converted to storage, external air-conditioning units were added, and incremental alterations obscured the original design.[6]

Resnick's own assessments changed with the building's condition. In 2005, he called it "revolutionary" but said that "from the beginning there was something unsuccessful about it, gloomy… now it looks awful."[6] He added, "You don't neglect a child, even if they are unsuccessful."[6] In 2011, he said its condition hurt him because the building had once been known internationally for its innovation, and that he turned his head away when passing it.[6] His comments made the gap between architectural intent and the building's later condition part of the Amir Center's public history.

Published sources vary in transliteration and chronology. The Jewish Virtual Library biography uses "Reznik," while its Israel Prize list uses "Resnick."[4][12] The Givat Ram campus synagogue is dated to 1956 by Ynet and to 1957 in Xnet's project chronology.[2][5] The range 1956–1957 is therefore used where assigning a single year would imply unsupported precision.