Goraly, Hemi, Architect. Emotional strength in a noise wall. Itzuv, Design & Architecture quarterly periodical, No. 20, 3 / 94.
“Mellawin” – Arabic word for “colorful, diverse”, “diverse” is the name that the workers who built it used to call it. A wall for protection against noise became a moving sculptural artwork.
It is located between extremes: south to it, white sawed Taltish marble of the Teddy Stadium; and north to it, wild gathered stones, forming the walls of the development. A situation that gives way to many variations of a special achievement, filled with imagination, which relates to stones quite differently than it used to be done before.
The wall is built of panels comprised of changing combinations; only this time, each panel is its own changing representation; and at the same time it reacts to the presentations contained in it.
The panels are partly built of amorphic gathered stones and flat stratum stones, and partly of ancient building stones from the ruins of Mammilla. The inclusion of used stones revives the past culture of the city. In the wall, window stills and affixing accessories were emphasized; elements have been built and sculptured under the inspiration of the surrounding and ancient cultures: a water trough, an altar, a milling stone, a tombstone, a gate. Even the design of the inscription engraved into the large boulder, at the center of the wall, reminds the oriental half-cursive Hebrew script.
A special accent has been placed on representative compositions, juxtaposition between different types of stones, elements contrasting and on the inherent beauty of natural rock.
Agricultural terraces, so characteristic to Jerusalem, are also displayed, to the joy of a built terrace and to the grief of a collapsing one.
The wall shows a new approach of the architectural design relation to building stones: the way rocks have been integrated into the walls, a construction made of different stones in one surface, the way the wall is not finished at the top in a closed and definite manner; and overall it blends so well into the environment, as though it had been standing here forever.