THE SYCAMORE HOUSE

Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Department of Architecture, Jerusalem

Idea projektu

THE SYCAMORE HOUSE
A Vernacular AI Pavilion for Shade, Play and Urban Memory in Holon
The Sycamore House reimagines Holon’s iconic sycamore tree as a living civic room for children. Rather than treating the tree as a picturesque background, the project understands it as an existing form of vernacular architecture: a natural canopy, a shaded gathering place, a local landmark, and a quiet carrier of urban memory.
In Mediterranean cities, shade has always been more than comfort. It is a social structure. People meet under trees, pause beneath pergolas, gather at thresholds, and build daily rituals around protection from sun, heat, and exposure. The project translates this local tradition into a contemporary public pavilion for children, where the tree becomes both playground and teacher.
The architecture is conceived as a lightweight independent structure of platforms, bridges, nets, lookout pods, and small places of retreat. It does not rely on the tree for support and does not dominate it. Instead, it carefully circles the trunk, follows the logic of the canopy, protects the root zone, and creates a sequence of elevated rooms that allow children to move through shade, height, texture, light, and memory.
AI is used here not as an image-making shortcut, but as a tool for reading and refining relationships: between branches and structure, between sun and shadow, between movement and stillness, between collective play and private discovery. Through human curation, these studies are translated into a buildable architectural system that remains light, reversible, and respectful toward the living tree.
The Sycamore House proposes a new kind of public space for children: one that is not only about play, but about attention, discovery, belonging, and ecological awareness. Children are invited to climb, observe, hide, meet, imagine, and understand the city from within one of its most recognizable natural symbols.
Rather than building over nature, the project builds carefully around it. It suggests that architecture for children can be generous, precise, and responsible: a civic structure that protects what already exists while opening it to new forms of collective life, curiosity, and wonder.

Popis projektu

This project consists of the following parts: an elevated lightweight pavilion surrounding an existing sycamore tree, shaded play platforms, small bridges, climbing nets, lookout pods, quiet retreat spaces, and protected circulation around the trunk and root zone. The main area is the central civic play pavilion, where children move through a sequence of shaded elevated rooms under the tree canopy. The project also includes ecological buffer zones around the roots, small gathering spaces, observation points, and flexible areas for play, learning, rest, and social interaction.

Technické informace

The construction of the project is based on a lightweight, independent, and reversible structural system that surrounds the existing sycamore tree without using it as a load-bearing element. The main structure is proposed as a modular steel or laminated timber frame, supported by minimal point foundations or screw piles in order to protect the tree’s root zone. Elevated platforms, bridges, lookout pods, climbing nets, and small retreat spaces are connected around the trunk and beneath the canopy. The floor surfaces are made of outdoor timber decking or recycled composite boards, with safety railings, stainless-steel cables, protective nets, and soft fall surfaces in play areas. The project also includes shaded areas, ecological buffer zones around the roots, and carefully planned circulation that allows children to play, climb, observe, and gather while preserving the living tree and its natural environment