DECEMBER 2023: Tel Aviv University’s opening week is delayed.
No bands. No beer on the grass.
THE BRIEF: Honor the victims of October 7th without overwhelming the students with grief.
Build something that brings hope.
THE CHALLENGE: “We have a budget and no idea. You have three weeks. GO.”
The south of Israel has one symbol everyone knows. The Kalanit, the red anemone, Israel’s national flower, blooming every winter across the fields of the Negev. The Darom Adom festival brings over 400,000 visitors south every year to walk among them. But this year it’s different.
From the bleeding soil, the flower continues to grow
They wanted hope, not grief. That was my answer.
It started with nature. The question was simple: how do you scale a Kalanit to four meters tall and keep it alive?
From the beginning I felt the petals were the key. If I solved the petals, I solved everything. The curve inward, the thinness, the way light passes through them, the proportion. And that raised the hardest question: which material?
I found red transparent acrylic. You can bend it with heat, manipulate it, cut it into any shape. And when I held it up to the sun, it threw a beautiful red shadow on the ground. I knew it. That was the material.
The only problem: acrylic cracks under pressure. Everyone pushed me toward red metal sheet. Easier to bend, no risk of breaking. But with the metal I would lose the red shadow. I said NO. We would be more careful, work slowly. The location gets full sun all day. I’m not giving up on that shadow.
The flower centers were the last unsolved problem. I needed something that could bridge the metal stem with the acrylic petals, carry the proportion, and look like it was always supposed to be there. I was driving, turning the problem over in my mind, when I saw it. Car wheel rims! I knew immediately it was right.
Each petal was bent by hand with heat guns. Each one had a specific place on a specific flower. We drilled carefully, held our breath. Some cracked and had to be thrown away. The ones that held, we kept.
Seven flowers at the center of Tel Aviv University. Four meters tall. Standing on time.
