Rafi Segal / Conceptions and Forms / Conceptions and Forms

Architecture is the art of shaping the space in which people live. As such, it reflects the way we understand the world (and shows the possibilities of how to approach its understanding). For me, architecture begins with observing the physical, social, and especially urban context of the project.
When I start a project, I ask: How can the place benefit from the building that is to be constructed on it, and how can the building benefit from the place where it is to be built? Then I engage with the program. Over time, the program of the building evolves faster than its shape.

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Rafi Segal – architect, urban planner, and scientist Rafi Segal studied architecture at the Technion in Israel, where he received his M. Sc. engineering degree. He completed his doctoral studies at Princeton University. From 1992 to 2000, he worked with Zvi Hecker on the project of the Palmach Museum of History in Tel Aviv. Later, he founded his own office, which, after a recent reorganization, won an international competition for the design of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. The work of the office, currently based in the USA, includes projects and research in the fields of architecture and urban solutions. His texts and exhibitions, among others Cities of Dispersal (2008), Territories: Islands, Camps and Other States of Utopia (2003), and A Civilian Occupation (2003), have had a tremendous impact on socio-political discussions about contemporary urbanism. Segal has taught architecture and urbanism at MIT, at the graduate design school at Harvard, at the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York, and currently teaches at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University.