Zvi Hecker

Zvi Hecker was born in Kraków, Poland, in 1931.[2] During the Second World War he fled Poland, and he immigrated to Israel in 1950.[1][2] He studied architecture at the Technion in Haifa alongside Eldar Sharon, with Alfred Neumann among their teachers.[2]

After graduating, Hecker, Sharon, and Neumann formed a joint practice. Their partnership operated from 1960 to 1964, producing projects that included Bat Yam City Hall and Dubiner House in Ramat Gan.[1][2] After the partnership ended, Hecker practiced independently. He moved to Berlin in 1990 and maintained an office there while continuing his work in Israel.[1][2]

Hecker's earliest major commission with Sharon and Neumann was Bat Yam City Hall, opened in 1963. It was the first collaboration among the three architects, with Hecker and Sharon having recently completed their Technion studies and Neumann joining as the senior partner.[4] At its opening, the building was described as avant-garde and as departing in form from other public buildings in Israel.[4]

The building's inverted-pyramid form consists of three masses stacked around an open central atrium, with offices along the exterior walls. A precast concrete screen moderated direct sunlight and concealed internal functions, while four rooftop towers provided light and ventilation in a building designed before air conditioning.[4] Architect Amnon Bar Or called it a "symbol on a global scale for Brutalist architecture." An architectural survey also places the building within a return to blended local and international forms, describing its ziggurat-like mass and colorful abstractions of Islamic latticework.[5][4]

The partnership also produced the Danziger Building, home to the Technion's Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Haifa, with drawings and related materials held in the National Library of Israel's archive.[6] The library's catalog credits Hecker and Sharon, with advice from Neumann, with winning an early-1960s competition for Training Base 1—Bahad 1, the IDF Officers' School near Mitzpe Ramon.[7] Hecker later described the completed complex as the first project he designed on his own.[8]

Completed in 1968, Bahad 1 brought residences, classrooms, dining facilities, clubs, offices, and ceremonial grounds together as a connected unit sheltered from the desert climate.[8] Hecker said its buildings enclosed outdoor space as well as rooms, creating a protected environment based on an idea he had considered while serving in an engineering unit. Neumann later returned to collaborate with him on the base's synagogue.[8] Hecker called Bahad 1 "an oasis in the desert" and compared it to lodging places built by the Nabataeans for camel caravans. He said the project established a recurring tendency in his work to design something resembling a small city rather than an isolated building.[8]

Xnet describes Ramot Polin as a Ministry of Housing commission connected to post-1967 efforts to expand Jewish settlement in Jerusalem. It was intended primarily for the Kollel Poland community, although it was eventually inhabited by several ultra-Orthodox groups.[9] The neighborhood was planned as five clusters, each composed of five boomerang-shaped buildings, with protected passages and intimate courtyards intended to encourage community. Roads and parking were kept outside the pedestrian residential area.[9]

Hecker drew on the polygonal forms of traditional Jerusalem terrace stones, describing the design as though "we had enlarged the wild stone to the size of a story—and more."[9] Rabbi Mordechai Deutsch, the community's representative, influenced the program: apartments received open balconies for sukkot, and kitchens were enlarged at the expense of living rooms.[9]

The 727-apartment project began construction in autumn 1976. Its first stage used prefabricated concrete elements faced with pale rectangular stone; the second used conventional construction and Jerusalem stone, with calmer triangular forms and more deliberately planned courtyards and passages.[9] The industrialized process proved more complex than expected, requiring about 300 different elements rather than the anticipated 30, and the contractor Ashtrum lost money on the work.[9]

Apartments narrowed at higher levels, ranging from 92 square meters on the lowest floor to 60 square meters on the fourth. Their sloping walls could create an impression of greater space but left areas difficult to furnish. Hecker had intended the internal partitions to be removable so apartments could be combined or reduced as family needs changed, but the prefabricated system required structural walls and prevented the plan from being realized.[9]

The Spiral House in Ramat Gan, designed between 1984 and 1990 with Gil Bernstein, Shmuel Grobman, and Rina Haring, became one of Hecker's best-known works.[2] Photographs cataloged by the National Library of Israel show Hecker at the construction site making distinctive elements himself and preparing them before concrete was poured.[10] He compared the building to a small city or a vertical Arab village, extending the urban-ensemble approach he associated with Bahad 1.[8] The Spiral House earned Hecker the 1999 Rechter Prize for Architecture and was one of four works selected to represent Israel at the 1991 architectural biennale in Venice.[3][2]

After moving to Berlin, Hecker designed the Heinz-Galinski School, a Jewish elementary school. He initially intended the building to resemble a sunflower, but its form changed during design and construction; viewed from above, it resembles an open book, a form connected to its educational function.[11] His European projects also included the Jewish Heritage Center in Duisburg, dated 1996–1999, and a Holocaust memorial in Bologna completed in 2015.[2] He produced a 2005 rendering for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and taught architecture in Germany.[12][2]

Other notable projects included Dubiner House in Ramat Gan and structures for the Royal Military Police at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.[1] His buildings in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood were noted for seeking to define new formal spaces, while the Palmach Museum in Tel Aviv was dated to 1995 in his ynet obituary.[3][2]

Hecker and his family collected and preserved much of his archive, covering material from 1959 to 1990 and documenting both his partnership with Neumann and Sharon and his later independent work.[1] The archive is digitally available through a collaboration involving the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, the National Library of Israel, Bezalel, and the Judaica Department of Harvard University Library.[9] Its hundreds of sketches and early versions document his search for practical ways to translate formal ideas into buildings.[9]

Hecker's architecture and paintings were exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. The National Library of Israel characterizes his approach as treating architectural form as the product of precise thought rather than as an exercise in form alone.[1] Bat Yam City Hall has been described as an internationally significant example of Brutalist architecture, while the Spiral House received the Rechter Prize and represented Israel at the 1991 Venice architectural biennale.[3][2][4]

Hecker died at his home in Berlin, with his family, on the eve of Yom Kippur 2023. He was 92.[2]

The Danziger Building became the subject of a dispute with the Technion. In an account recounted by Xnet, Hecker said the institution completed the building contrary to the original design; he responded by breaking windows and painting walls as he believed they should appear, and the conflict reached court.[9] National Library of Israel catalog records date the legal case to 1966–1970 and state that Hecker, Naomi Neumann—Alfred Neumann's widow—and the Technion eventually signed a settlement agreement, although the catalog does not specify its terms.[13]

Ramot Polin attracted international architectural attention but also criticism that it prioritized form over utility and that its repeated geometries amounted to unjustified ornament. The Israel Museum mounted an exhibition about the project during its first year of construction, before it was complete.[9] Following the change of government in 1977, Housing Minister Gideon Pat ordered construction halted. About a decade later, the Ministry of Housing asked Hecker to complete the remaining three arms using a revised design and conventional construction.[9]

Hecker later said that Ramot Polin needed more design time and a larger-than-usual budget, and that combining prefabricated and conventional construction from the outset would have been wiser.[9] Over time, residents closed sukkah balconies and removed or cut through sloping walls to obtain more usable space. Hecker expressed concern about the structural risks but also said he identified with the residents' creative alterations.[9]