Abigail Klein Leichman
May 22, 2019

Two projects by Israel’s Kimmel Eshkolot Architects received awards at the 9th annual International Space Design Award Idea-Tops in Shenzhen, China and the 2019 Shenzhen Global Design Awards during Shenzhen Design Week in April.

Kimmel Eshkolot Architects partner Etan Kimmel was the keynote speaker for the award ceremony’s gala opening on April 25.

On April 26, he accepted the Best Digital Architecture Design Award for the Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl (Jerusalem) and the Global Nomination Award for the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University.

The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv. Photo by Oz Rittner

Tel Aviv-based Kimmel Eshkolot also received the Architecture Design: Silver Award at the 2019 Shenzhen Global Design Awards for the Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen on Mount Herzl.

The 9th Idea-Tops award competition received 7,113 entries from 45 countries and regions. The awards were initiated by China Interior Design Website in collaboration with the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.

The Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl previously won the 2018 International Award for Excellence from the Royal Institute of British Architects. It commemorates Israel’s fallen soldiers with an undulating funnel-shaped formation of bricks open to the sky and a 250-meter “Wall of Names” comprised of more than 23,000 bricks individually engraved with the name of a fallen soldier and date of death.

The Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen. Photo by Amit Geron

The 10,000 square-meter Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University is an environmentally friendly structure housed within a thermally insulated wood-panel “treasure box.”

Kimmel Eshkolot Architects, founded in 1986, also has won prizes for projects in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek neighborhood, the government compound in Jerusalem, the Davidson Museum in the Archaeological Park near the Western Wall, and a rehabilitation center in Beersheva.

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