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Nili Portugali, Architect

Profile of Nili Portugali, Architect, headquartered in Israel. No project submitted by Nili Portugali, Architect has been published on Architecture News Plus (ANP).

: Nili Portugali – © Nili Portugali, Architect

Principal

Nili Portugali

Brief description

Nili Portugali is a practicing architect working in Israel for more than 30 years teaching at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa (until 2006 at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Architectural Department, Jerusalem). Her work has focused on both practice and theory, and is tightly connected to the holistic-phenomenological school of thought.

Her projects and buildings which are much beyond architecture reflect the Israeli reality, a place being an interface between the East and the West, a cultural interface she personally represent, being a seventh generation descendent of a family living in the Galilee city of Safad since the early 19th century. This city of the “Kabbala” had its impact on her work. She is a graduate of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (A.A), London (Diploma 1973). She studied architecture and Buddhism at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A (1979-81), and worked and participated in research with Prof. Christopher Alexander at the Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley California.

Portugali has won prizes in competitions; she is invited as a guest lecturer to international conferences and participates in various exhibitions in Israel and abroad. She has published many articles on architecture and her work is documented in professional magazines, in the press and on television. She was Member of Special Committee for the authorization of schools of Architecture in Israel at the Council for Higher Education.

Her new book was selected among the 24 books of the year by the Royal Institute of British Architects (R.I.B.A) International Book Award

The Act of Creation and the Spirit of a Place. A Holistic-Phenomenological Approach to Architecture / Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart / London 2006