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22_topo.graphics.txt**Topo.graphics is a joint project with Diana Ibanez Lopez that looks at the city as a man-made landscape. It was launched as in the Vienna Architecture Summer School of 2022. During its seven days, participants attended daily lectures and undertook field work in the city of Vienna. The resulted was a series of reportages and photo-essays that depict the city of Vienna as an urban topography.

Participants: Fabian Kompatscher, Marie Lang, Zoe Oschwald and Jacob Lindloff

Images below are by Fabian Kompatscher, Jacob Lindloff, Marie Lang and Richard Pobaschnig

02_URBURB.txt**In 2013 I joined the team of the Israeli Pavilion at the 14th international Architecture Biennale in Venice as an assistant curator, undertaking roles of research, writing, photography and press for the exhibition. The following images are graphic material and photography produced for the exhibition and International catalogues.

The URBURB: a landscape that is neither urban nor suburban, a fragmented mosaic of one hundred years of modernist planning that dominates the built landscape of Israel-Palestine. It is a compound of early twentieth-century garden-cities, mid-century social housing, and generic, high-rise residential typologies of the past two decades.

20_phd.txt**Towards Jerusalem: The Architecture of Pilgrimage is the title of my PhD dissertation. Part of the city/architecture PhD-by-design program at the Architectural Association in London, supervised by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici.

The thesis explored the ritual of sacred travel to the City of Jerusalem. It places pilgrimage as a project in which the pilgrim, as an independent subject who is led by spiritual orientation, contributes to the appropriation of the cities and landscapes that he or she is perpetually crossing. While pilgrimage is understood as a journey in pursuit of a religious objective, it is nevertheless studied as a powerful social vector that often destabilized the economic, civic, and political conditions of places of worship.

The thesis expands the definition of pilgrimage to Jerusalem by including various analogous ‘Jerusalems’ that proliferated around the world as pilgrimage sites in their own right: structures, landscapes, and ritual complexes that copy the architecture holy city. It is therefore that travelling to the City of Jerusalem can be seen as a flexible ritual that is not geographically confined but could be enacted by the varied combination of text, place, memory, and visual imagination.

The thesis unfolds chronologically and thematically in order to explore how the mentality of pilgrims and the scenography of pilgrimage has produced particular structures, landscapes, and representations that I refer to as the Architecture of Pilgrimage. Thematically, the thesis deals with sacred landscapes, analogical thinking, movement in ritual, the politics of heritage, and collective memory in the city. Methodologically, it uses photography as a design tool both in the written component, as an illustration of the research, and as a design project: a concluding travelogue that attempts to reclaim both the idea of travel and the genre of travel-writing by offering virtual pilgrimage through analogous Jerusalems.

The layout of the printed dissertation and typography is by Michal Sahar, binding by Ido Agassi.

10_seoulbiennale.txt**Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism: Sit(e)lines of a Garden City explores Haifa’s system of urban stairs as present and future shared spaces. Suturing public and private space with vistas that sweep towards the Mediterranean and green corridors, the stairs that traverse monuments, markets, cinemas, and residential homes, are reimagined as spaces of heterogeneous mingling, of both passage and pause. Away from the noise of the street and surrounded by multi-family housing and vegetation, the stairs can become a true collective space.

The installation brings these ideas to the exhibition site in the Seoul Biennale through the integration of lenticular photography of sightlines into free-standing ‘stair structures’, capturing moments of collectiveness in four typical stair elements that share different views, locations and sizes. The views were captured by photographer Gili Merin, commissioned for this project to present the city immersed in its local vegetation and topography. These four pieces, separated in various locations across the biennale exhibition grounds, each offer encounters with a stair space and view. Individually and together they tell a story about the city, inviting visitors into the landscape of Haifa, and extending this space of conviviality into Seoul.

Rafi Segal A+U: Rafi Segal, Gili Merin (Collaborating Artist)

04_SOS Brutalism.txt**SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey
2017, Park Books
photographer *

03_window-less Berlin.txt**Wandering the streets of Berlin, I noticed a repetitive phenomena which - to the locals - seemed mundane: commonly known as �fire walls�, many facades remain entirely window-less, awaiting further construction which is forever halted; irregular regulations within a city scarred by violent partitions. The absurdity of these walls was magnified in a series of processed images, transforming the entire city into dead-end walls, creating, in their totality, a surreal �Monolith City�.
With this thought in mind, the �Void Strategy� for an empty lot in the midst of Berlin was developed, as an opaque structure of concrete punctured only by one, over-scaled opening, hinting the interior: an enclosed semi-private public space, encompassed by an inverted facade, creating an oasis-like inner courtyard in Berlin�s busy Mitte District.
Universitut der Kunste Berlin / Professor Enrique Sobejano / 2014

06_Wohnungsfrage.txt**Communal by Commune was an installation on the occasion of the Wohnungsfrage exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin

Communal by Commune depicts a concrete terrain and a living community � kibbutz Yagur at the foothills of Mt. Carmel. Almost a hundred years since its founding, Yagur still operates as a collective and is still working out the idea of the Common as ground for the production of social practices and modes of spatiality. Against the grain of habitual patterns of building and dwelling characterizing rural settlements and uniform communities, Yagur is a conspicuous case of an architecture without instincts nor tradition. The all too proverbial double-bind of vernacular spontaneity and typological homogeneity is taken over in Yagur by an elaborate binary mode of operation relying, first, on the incessant import of expert knowledge to present and represent its socio-cultural idiosyncrasy, and second, on persistent breeding of its own informal savoir-faire to mediate between the experts and the amateurs, the theorists and the bricoleurs.

05_Hatzor.txt**The Kibbutz Hatzor plan is an on-going project lead by architect Rafi Segal (Rafi Segal A+U and prof. at MIT) that includes a residential extension to the rural-communal settlement in the south of Israel. The project searches for a middle ground between two distinct ways of living: the socialist idealism of early kibbutz settlements, which was conceived as a single plot of collectively owned land, and the privatized lifestyle of detached suburban houses.
The project is accompanied by an extensive documentation project of both the existing landscapes, the joint design process with the residence and the forthcoming construction, some of which are presented below.

01_garden of the forking.txt** �I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths. (...) In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts�ui P�n, he chooses� simultaneously�all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork.�
�Jorge Luis Borges, 1941

Suspended between arbitrary cartographic acts and geographical reality, thirteen territories remain enclaved within the intricate, overdrawn and ever disputed Israeli-Lebanese frontier. This particular borderline condition is an opportunity for an architectural study of open and loose infrastructures aiming to liberate the terrain from its geopolitical paralysis. Hence, this presentation refrains from offering a design-driven solution, and instead suggests a tactical proposal for ambiguous architectural speculations which could shift, modify, replace and substitute, while untangling the inherent liminality and escalating hostility of the Israeli-Lebanese frontier.

The series of settings are super-positions of existing typological aberrations on both sides of the border: deviant infrastructure, over-planned landscapes, makeshift follies, historical relics and abandoned or overused border fortifications, stripped to their skeleton and foundation and relieved from aesthetic intent.

As the leftover grids randomly cluster and overlap, unique constellations in multiple configurations arise. Much like Borges� Garden of the Forking Paths, they proliferate and multiply into probable or made-up future(s) of the enclaves, embracing programmatic indeterminacy, celebrating ex-territoriality and acting out bipolar architecture, doomed to fluctuate between construction and destruction, re-use and entropy, skeptical planning and speculative realism.

26_cafes.txt** Design Studio Viennese Cafés: Urban Interior, Public Salon

This Masters’ design studio focused on a unique Viennese phenomenon: the Café House. Far from being merely a place for the consumption of coffee, the Café is a social-spatial phenomenon that serves as an extended living room, where games are played, domestic activities take place, and prolonged stay is encouraged. Over the semester, we studied the architecture, typology, history, and performance of these cafés as interior urbanism and Vienna's social, economic, and political conditions which enabled (and encouraged) their urban resilience.

Students: Allen Buess, Wen-Shan Cui, Nermina Dolamic, Rosa-Fiene Gronski, Ivanka Hristova, Dijana Imsirovic, Merve Karamanoglu, Lea Kuhlmann, Yuliy Lichev, Andrei-Sorin Olteanu, Fabiana Roppelt, Chantal Sahler, Grischa Schmidt, Marcel Schmitz, Leon Schreiner, Ella Senzberger, Flora Struber, Marie-Lou Zhong

12_dip16.txt**Homo Urbanus: Laboratory for Sensitive Observers is the title of Diploma 16 unit at the Architectural Association taught by filmmakers Beka & Lemoine and Gili Merin. Working at the crossroads of social sciences and visual arts, the diploma students engaged with in-depth observation of social life and collective behaviour in the public space in order to question the infinite forms of interactions between human beings and their built environment. The unit pioneered the belief that the films produced by the students are the architectural project itself; many of these projects have won international awards and were showcased on numerous platforms including the Venice architecture film festival, the London architecture film festival, Transfer film awards, Phoenix short film festival, and Loop design platform in Barcelona.

Stills below are by the unit's alumni: Aijie Xiong (China); Chak Hin Leung (Mumbai); Nena Aru (Jerusalem); Beduro Bae (Venice)

films from the 2020-2021 academic year: http://www.bekalemoine.com/aaschool_dip16/menu.html

films from the 2019-2020 academic year: http://www.bekalemoine.com/aaschool_dip16/index.html

16_Bauakademie.txt**Contributor (photography)
Bauakademie Berlin, Armin Linke (2021)
Jovis
*

11_atarim.txt**To mark 100 years of architectural work by three generations of the Rechter family, a temporary exhibition took over the interior of the "Colosseum" - once Tel Aviv's first pharmacy, and in recent decades the notorious "Pussycat" nightclub. Located as a round folly in the centre of Atarim Square - the city's waterfront megastructure from the early 1970s, the Colosseum is due to be demolished alongside the entire multi-tiered complex, making room for luxury development by Norman Foster. The exhibition presented commissioned work that documented a day in the square. Curated by Dana Gordon with Lee Elstein, photographs of the exhibition opening by Michael Jacobson and Jeremy Hoffman

25_wadi.txt** Wadi is an exhibition at the Haifa Museum of Art, curated by Dan Handel. It deals with the various manifestations of a wadi as a geological formation that shapes urban infrastructures, defines cultural and psychological boundaries, and forms the basis for natural and human occurrences that constantly flow and blur the boundaries of cities. The exhibition uses local phenomena and situations to participate in broader conversations about the environment, urban settlement, and the limits of humanity.

My contribution to the exhibition is a photography series that focuses on the remains of a 13th-century Carmelite Monastery, where the Order was first established. It shows limestone and its particular manifestations in Wadi Siach—as a spring, a cave, a surface—that consists an an integral part of the spiritual and historical infrastructure of the Carmelites. The series of photographs explores the order’s historical sites as a presence that grows from, leans on, or digs into the rock.

The photos are exhibited alongside a stone capital from the Carmelite church in Wadi Siach from the 13th century, and Piero Lorenzetti’s altarpiece from the Carmelite monastery in Siena (ca. 1280-1314) that depicts the Carmelite hermits in Elijah’s spring, the very same one that is depicted in the contemporary photographs.

Installation photos by Dor Kedmi

23_luege.txt** “The Lueger Trial:” Competition proposal for the permanent contextualisation of the Karl Luege Monument in Vienna.
Project by Yael Bartana; architect Assaf Kimmel; research and photography Gili Merin

On April 11, 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann commenced in Jerusalem. As the Nazi officer in charge of Jewish Evacuation, he was charged with fifteen counts, including crimes against the Jewish people and humanity. Since none of the courthouses in Israel could accommodate the public who wished to attend the event, this monumental trial took place in a public theatre that was transformed for the occasion. It included a raised platform for the three judges, double cubicles for the live translators, a long table for the attorney general and his assistants, and rows of seats for up to 750 observers. At its centre, a bullet-proof glass box was set up for the defendant; it stood in perfect line with the witness stands, forcing Eichmann to face his victims, head-on.

The Eichmann trial had an enormous psychological, social, and political impact on Israeli society, causing a paradigmatic shift in the way the Holocaust was perceived. The survivors, formerly treated as weak and shameful remnants of a diasporic past, received recognition within the collective consciousness of the state to the point of becoming synonymous with Israel’s raison d’etre. Within this context, we propose to encase the sculpture of Dr Karl Lueger in a glass box. Reminiscent of Eichmann’s defence booth, which had since become a signifier of justice, it will symbolise not only the actions taken to heal the collective trauma of the Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, but also the insistence on historical justice. Our intervention will place Lueger on trial for his antisemitic past and contextualize his mayoral policies within the history of Nazi persecution.

Considering global protest against problematic historical legacies, we have witnessed a tendency to remove memorials and historical figures from the public when they do not align with our contemporary ethics. Though this is an understandable act of obliterating harmful ideologies, it does not add much to our understanding of historical processes. Monuments (from the Latin monumentum, to warn or to recall), protect us against collective amnesia, reminding us of the traumas of the past and warning us about the future. Cancel culture brings no enlightenment. Removing the Lueger sculpture will remove the memory of his actions; it is, therefore, important to keep the original monument while changing its context. Our intervention does that without touching the figure itself, but putting a new perspective into action. It is not only a visual reminder of Eichmann’s prosecution: the glass box also recalls the bullet-proof glass installed in speeches of controversial politicians in the present. In that sense, the glass cage speaks not only of Eichmann, Lueger, and other problematic figures of the past, but also warns us of powerful, charismatic, and populist leaders of the future.

04_odyssea palestina.txt**Odyssea Palestina: a travelogue of travelogues to the Holy Land in Modernity is the title of my MA dissertation at the Architectural Association (AA) post-graduate program for History and Critical Thinking. It studies the historical process of documentation and representation of the land of Palestine through the eyes, lenses, and pens of nineteenth-century travellers, who blurred the line between pilgrims and tourists. The thesis describes their disappointing encounter with the actuality of this sacred geography and attempts to trace the reasons for the particular heightened expectations fostered by Western imagery and iconography. It concludes with a travelogue of my own from 2017-a series of photographs of contemporary heritage sites in Israel accompanied by the descriptions of Aviam Atar, a ranger of the Israeli National Parks Authority, who reveals the land in its current state of commodification and heritage-isation. His account unfolds the effects of the travellers, showing how the Holy Land transforms from a productive land to a theological landscape.

The thesis was awarded the AA writing prize and 2017. A revised version of the text and concluding travelogue appeared in MITs peer-reviewed journal Thresholds no. 46 in May 2017.

09_valueofland.txt**The Value of Land - Resilience of the Past was an installation lead by Studio Folder as a part of Far Away: So Close - the 25th Biennale for Design in Ljubljana, curated by Angela Rui and Maja Vardjan. In this installation, we attempted to examine the unfolding of history by challenging the notion of the past in broader terms and on an extended timescale. The conjunction point between the notion of resilience and traces of time exists in the land itself, which becomes the pivotal stage from which different interpretations about its value can be extracted.

Participants: Merve Bedir, Giulia Cordin, Marco Ferrari, David Gorny, Gili Merin, Monuriki (Marco Minicucci, Luis Pimentel, Livia Shamir), Elisa Pasqual, Ana Pecar, Anna Positano, and Studio Folder. photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani

02_object.txt**Research, editorial, photography
Zvi Efrat, The Object of Zionism: The Architecture of Israel (2018)
Spector Books

03_scatter.txt**Contributor (text, photo essay)
G. Merin, Odyssea Palestina: A Travelogue of Travelogues to the Holy Land in Modernity, pp. 44-65
Thresholds Vol. 46: SCATTER (2018)
MIT Press

19_BurningFarm.txt**Contributor (text)
G. Merin, The Basilica and the Rotunda: Type, Ritual and Analogy in Medieval Europe
Burning Farm (2023)
Burning Farm
*

04_SOS Brutalism.txt**Contributor (photography)
SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey (2017)
Park Books
*

05_Luxury and Modernism.txt**Contributor (photography)
Robin Schuldenfrei, Luxury and Modernism (2017)
Princeton University Press
*

08_AA Files.txt**Contributor (photo essay)
G. Merin, Eretz, pp. 58-67
AA Files 76 (2019)
AA Publications
*

01_elements.txt**Research, editorial, photography
Rem Koolhaas, Elements of Architecture (2018)
Taschen

16_Bauakademie.txt**Contributor (photography)
Bauakademie Berlin, Armin Linke (2021)
Jovis
*

11_zz.txt**Contributor (photography)
Do You Remember How Perfect Everything Was? The Work of Zoe Zenghelis (2021)
AA Publications
*

18_Stoa5.txt**Contributor (text)
G. Merin, Photography as a Critical Tool, pp. 38-57
Stoa 5: Workshop (2022)
Thymos Books
*

07_In Stato Quo.txt**Contributor (photography)
In Statu Quo: Structures of Negotiation (2018)
Hatje Cantz
*

17_Plat.txt**Contributor (text)
G. Merin, The Image and the Caption: Photographic Production and Consumption under Advanced Capitalism, pp. 52-67
Plat 10: Behold (2022)
Rice
*

06_Wallpaper City Guide Tel Aviv.txt**Wallpaper City Guide, Tel Aviv
2016, Phaidon
author *

*voice *plat behold launch: photographic production and consumption + panel discussion _ rice_ https://youtu.be/H9GJqGAOgqo?t=1290 *gili in the monocle radio about denise scott brown's photographic pilgrimage _ monocle24_ https://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-urbanist/400/pico-boulevard-santa-monica-denise-scott-brown/ *panta rhei spotlights: robert smithson, photography and travel _ panta rhei_ https://www.pantarheicollaborative.eu/gilimerin *gili is one of twelve prominent women in architecture photography _ archdaily_ https://www.archdaily.com/889233/12-women-in-architecture-photography-part-2 *articles *the medieval nuns’ guide to virtual travel _ economist_ https://www.economist.com/1843/2021/06/28/the-medieval-nuns-guide-to-virtual-travel?fbclid=IwAR15CEzw654IfKjKBNRAsU7LGhnHQ_FYVLVHTr3B63KE944lccWsEV6TgQA *the photos exposing what israel is trying to hide _ haaretz_ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-the-photos-exposing-what-israel-is-trying-to-hide-1.9928648 *david chipperfield on mies' neue national galerie's renovation in berlin _ archdaily_ https://www.archdaily.com/967248/most-of-the-people-thought-it-was-ugly-like-a-petrol-station-david-chipperfield-on-the-neue-nationalgaleries-renovation *how magazin gallery in vienna is challenging the narrative _ frame_ https://frameweb.com/article/shows/how-a-vienna-gallery-is-leading-the-democratization-of-design-exhibition *rem koolhaas in conversation with wolfgang tillmans _ metropolis_ http://www.metropolismag.com/architecture/rem-koolhaas-competition-torture-advocating-erausre-europe-ills/ *a photographic journey following zvi hecker _ uncube_ http://uncu.be/956Yae *exhibition review: bauhaus in modern palestine _ artsy_ http://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-tel-aviv-s-city-of-white-and-the-birth-of-bauhaus-in-palestine *tegart forts in palestine _ quaderns_ http://quaderns.coac.net/en/2015/03/tegart-forts/ *mivtachim sanitarium transformed _ uncube_ http://www.uncubemagazine.com/blog/15673493 *garden of the forking paths _ this site_ http://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/garden-of-the-forking-paths?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=70dca549ee-Garden+of+the+Forking+Paths&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_85439a2e8c-70dca549ee-99471941&ct=t%28On_Site_Review_becomes_The_Site_Magazine1_29_2016%29 *bauhaus centenary in tel aviv _ frame_ https://www.frameweb.com/article/living/how-bauhaus-helped-shape-tel-aviv *bolwoningen _ archdaily_ http://www.archdaily.com/593390/ad-classics-bolwoning-dries-kreijkamp/ *photos *sos brutalism _ the guardian_ https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/dec/15/block-brutalist-treasures-sos-brutalism-architecture-pictures *venice biennale: freespace _ architects journal_ https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/culture/venice-biennale-2018-freespace-on-a-tight-rein/10031515.article?blocktitle=VB&contentID=16106 *serpentine pavilion by francis kéré _ metropolis_http://www.metropolismag.com/architecture/serpentine-pavilion-2017-a-first-look-at-francis-keres-design/ *barcelona pavilion _ archdaily_ http://www.archdaily.com/109135/ad-classics-barcelona-pavilion-mies-van-der-rohe/ *milan galaratesse _ archdaily_http://www.archdaily.com/867165/ad-classics-gallaratese-quarter-milan-aldo-rossi-carlo-aymonino *ronchamp _ archdaily_ http://www.archdaily.com/84988/ad-classics-ronchamp-le-corbusier/ *interviews *interview with mark cousins _ mark_ http://gilimerin.com/print/CousinsS.jpg *interview with ippolito pestellini laparelli _ frame_ http://gilimerin.com/print/ippo.jpg *interview with malkit shoshan _ mark_ http://gilimerin.com/print/malkit.jpg *matera capital of culture - interview with joseph grima and pier vittorio aureli _ haaretz_ http://gilimerin.com/print/Matera.jpg *also *all articles _ archdaily_ https://www.archdaily.com/author/gili-merin *all photography _ archdaily_ https://www.archdaily.com/photographer/gili-merin

Gili is an architect and photographer based in Vienna. She holds a PhD from the AA in London and had studied architecture at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, the UdK in Berlin, and the Waseda University of Tokyo. Her doctoral dissertation 'Towards Jerusalem: The Architecture of Pilgrimage' (supervised by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici) explores structures of spiritual travel using photography as a design tool. In 2018, the thesis won the annual AA writing prize; in 2023, it was awarded the Graham Foundation Grant and will be published as the book “Analogous Jerusalem” (Humboldt Books, 2024).

Formerly the head of history and theory of architecture at the Royal College of Arts (RCA) and a Diploma Unit Master at the AA, Gili currently holds a Post-Doc position at the TU Vienna and is a lecturer at the Negev School of Architecture in Be’er Sheva. She lectured, participated in panels, and led workshops at various institutions, amongst them the Harvard GSD, the MoMA, the CCA, EPFL, and the Universities of Syracuse, Porto, Aarhus, Rice, Carelton, and Aalto.

She was trained as an architect and researcher at OMA in Rotterdam and Kuehn Malvezzi in Berlin. Her photographs have been exhibited in a number of exhibitions and publications worldwide, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, HKW in Berlin, the Rotterdam Biennale and the Seoul Biennale for Urbanism. Her writings and reportages have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese; she has been published in several journals including the Economist, the AA Files, MIT’s Thresholds, Plat Journal, The Guardian, Apollo Magazine, The Architects’ Journal, and the Architectural Review.

gili.merin@gmail.com

0,64,78,94,85,92,90,46,80,95,66,68,44,20,11,2,81,77,75,69,23,50,93,1,70,52,15,74,59,65,61,13,56,57,8,17,21,41,48,54,5,10,51,76,9,16,18,42,19,45,72,53,12,71,49,3,55,4,6,7,14,58,73,22,60,47,24*27