It’s no secret that the densely populated Israeli city of Bat Yam has faced its share of urban problems and decay in recent years. But as “Timing 2010,” the city’s recent Biennale of Landscape Urbanism, shows, there is no shortage of ideas for transforming the city into a showcase for re-imagining Israel’s urban environments.
Sigal Barnir, a lecturer at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art & Design and Yael Moria-Klain, a professor of landscape architecture at Haifa’s Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, curated the three-day Biennale, which was an initiative of Bat Yam Mayor Shlomi Lahiani. During the event, funded by the city, Bat Yam became home to a number of site-specific installations — some of which are seen below — that aim to beautify public spaces, as well as to enhance their functionality.