Batsheva Art And Dance Campus

LOCATION
Neve Sha’anan , Tel Aviv Jaffa

SIZE
12,000 SQM

STATUS
In Progress

COLLABORATION
TeMA Urban Landscape Design w/ Adjaye Associates

Batsheva Arts Campus is situated in the Old Central Bus Station area in Neve Sha'anan, as part of a broader urban renewal of the Shomron block, a mixed-use development of residential, commercial, and public buildings rising around the campus. Sitting at a strategic urban seam, it links southern neighborhoods to the city center. The campus will serve as the permanent home of Batsheva Dance Company, and is expected to act as a significant urban catalyst for this part of the city.

The campus is designed as a series of human-scaled indoor-outdoor spaces that open the campus to the urban context. It includes a 550-seat performance theatre, a black box pavilion, rehearsal studios, a community studio and an urban living room open to the public, as well as cafés and a restaurant. The outdoor program extends across two public plazas designed to host outdoor performances and public events, an ecological rooftop garden developed with the SPNI, and a rooftop that opens in summer for outdoor screenings.

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01

Memory Link Canopy and The Birka

The ecological pool draws from the site's history, designed in reference to the ancient water cistern of Beit HaBeer, the 19th-century structure preserved on the adjacent plot. A concrete canopy marks the edge of the lower square, providing shade and defining the threshold between the two public levels of the campus.

The pool's edge is formed by stone steps that echo the stepped descent from street level to the theatre entrance, connecting the two movements across the campus. The steps are finished in the same stone as the plaza above, continuing the material language across levels.

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02

The Green Room and the blackbox pavillion

A defined green space at the heart of the lower square, lawn, dense planting, and a canopy of trees providing natural shade. The area is bounded by a stone bench of varying height, creating a soft threshold between the green interior and the surrounding plaza.

A pavilion set adjacent to the Green Room, facing both levels of the campus. Its roof forms a small amphitheatre, tiered seating and steps oriented toward the upper square, while the pavilion itself, including a café, opens toward the lower square below. The pavilion sits beneath the main concrete canopy, which spans across the campus and ties the three structures together.

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03

THE Upper PLazza

The upper plaza is the central gathering space of the campus- an open room from which all movement flows: down to the lower square, into the theatre or studio building, up to the publicly accessible rooftops, and onward toward the preserved historic structures- “the Platform Building” or Beit Habeer.

The upper plaza is a continuous surface of uniquely cut stone, assembled to form a pattern derived from the mashrabiya of the campus facades- the same geometry reflected above in the concrete canopy overhead.

Across the plaza, a field of water jets defines a series of shifting rooms within the open space, capable of hosting performances and public gatherings. When inactive, the plaza reads as a single uninterrupted surface, open and fully flexible.

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04

The Community Studio

The community studio is a publicly accessible space- open to the neighborhood and offering free classes run by Batsheva for the surrounding community. The building sits below street level, its section formed by planted terraces that screen the adjacent street and ease the transition from the city into the campus, it faces the residential streets beyond the campus. At its entrance, a small garden serves as an outdoor waiting room,a place to pause between classes, sheltered from the plaza and oriented toward the neighborhood it serves.

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05

The Rooftop Garden

A public green roof on the sixth floor of the studio building, open to the neighborhood. The garden is designed as a naturalistic ecological space, developed in collaboration with the SPNI. Planting is selected to attract butterflies and bees, supporting local biodiversity above the city. Local kindergartens will take part in maintaining the garden, making it a living community space as much as a designed one.

A structural constraint became a design opportunity when the ribbed ceiling of the studio below required mechanical systems to be placed above the uppermost slab, leaving only certain strips of the roof with sufficient soil depth for planting. Where depth allowed, planting beds were laid directly into the substrate; where it did not, raised planters were introduced. The result was a varied landscape of elevated planters aligned naturally with the community garden concept, giving the space the informal, tended quality of a working garden rather than a designed green roof.

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Next Project

KAPLAN–HASHALOM CANOPIES