Architect turned film-maker Yael Melamede presents an insightful, though perhaps faintly indulgent, portrait of her mother, Israeli architect Ada Karmi-Melamede. Together with her brother Ram Karmi, Karmi-Melamede designed the Supreme Court of Israel building in Jerusalem in the early 1990s, and later built a brilliant solo practice, including the design of Ben Gurion Airport.
Architectural Philosophy
Karmi-Melamede's ethos is to create buildings that take root in their allotted space, an "architecture of the ground and of the sky" – rather than replicating the endless glass towers of first-world cities that could be placed anywhere. Another witty maxim of hers is: "The cheapest building material is the light." She aimed to move away from her brother's fashionable brutalism and concrete, a conflict that appears to have resulted in a fascinating dialogue—or possibly conflict—within the Supreme Court building itself.
Personal and Political Dimensions
Karmi-Melamede is an articulate, quietly energetic figure, answering questions from her daughter that touch—glancingly—upon a painful family split. Her family settled in New York in the 1980s, where she taught at Columbia University, but she left when she was hurtfully not granted academic tenure by the male-dominated establishment. She returned to Israel, leaving her husband and children behind in the United States.
This family split corresponds to a split within Israel itself. Karmi-Melamede is clearly downcast by the Netanyahu government's move three years ago to lessen the power of the Supreme Court; she is shown adjacent to a demonstration, though not exactly joining in. New York Times architecture correspondent Paul Goldberger, who praised her Supreme Court building in 1992, now says that his words today make him sad, because they "evoke a time when one anticipated international leadership from Israel." He says that this must surely occur to anyone associated with the symbolic building, but Melamede does not in fact put this point to Karmi-Melamede.
A lucid and informative study nonetheless. Ada: My Mother the Architect is in UK cinemas from 1 May.
