Innovation by the Sea

Not Just Fun and Games: Here, the energy created through children?s playground games and rides will be directed to pump groundwater. The water will be purified at the location and irrigate newly planted vegetation. One ride utilizes solar energy to desalinate seawater. Ofer Bilick and Jakub Szczesny (Photo by Tamir Zadok) Image by Tamir Zadok
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.
The Forward is free to read but not free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO