A Weaponized Household    
Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London, 2019
Displayed at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2021


Model of MAMAD Domesticated Window, 1:4
American cardboard, 50-30-20 cm



This work examines the appearance of the renewed living space under NOP 38, the national outline plan for seismic strengthening of residential buildings in Israel. While planning authority is delegated to each city based on municipal needs, NOP 38 emphasizes the internal safety room (MAMAD) as a “bomb shelter built within the shell of a building and intended to protect its occupants from attack.” 

The MAMAD – a legal and safety requirement with specifications set by the Home Front Command, serves as the structural engineering core of urban renewal in Israel.






Installation view at the Tel Aviv museum of Art


The concept of planning architectural forms of civil protection in Israel originated with the 1951 Civil Defense Law, which mandated a network of underground public shelters. Between the 1967 and 1973 wars, these shelters shifted from public spaces to residential communal areas. After the 1991 Gulf War, they were integrated into individual homes to minimize the time needed to reach safety.

This research draws attention to the new order generated by the MAMAD in the built environment as an architectural module that piles upward, creating reinforced towers attached to the sides of existing buildings or integrated into new buildings as supporting vertical-structural elements, such as fortified piers.



    


SHELTERS, ISRAEL, 1949—1982
4:52 min





SHELTERS, ISRAEL, 2006—2021
11:19 min

3D animation by Yoel Peled
Sound editing by Or Rimer




This instrumentalization of the mundane that defines the household and the Israeli civil expanse as an arena of military and economic power, is all the while camouflaged under the auspices of the financial interests of urban renewal, reflecting the essence of a weaponized household.

This instrumentalization of the mundane that defines the household and the Israeli civil expanse as an arena of military and economic power, is all the while camouflaged under the auspices of the financial interests of urban renewal, reflecting the essence of a weaponized household.

Thus, a state of impending war or an “interwar operation” is fertile ground for embedding political-military terms in the civilian realm of Israel, and embellishing it with features of self-defense, even in times of quiet, all the while blurring the differences between the quotidian and State of Emergency.





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