Rafael Segal
Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design
Department of Urban Planning and Design
Rafi Segal is a practicing architect and a writer. His work includes the Palmach History Museum, designed with Zvi Hecker and built in Tel-Aviv (1999), and Villa 003 of the ORDOS 100 project, currently under construction in Inner Mongolia, China. He is co-editor of Cities of Dispersal (Wiley and Sons, 2008), Territories -- Islands, Camps and Other States of Utopia (KW ,Walther Konig, 2003), and A Civilian Occupation -- The Politics of Israeli Architecture (Verso, Babel, 2003), which gained extensive recognition and led to a series of exhibitions at Storefront, New York City; KW Berlin; Witte de Witte, Rotterdam; Kunsthall, Malmo; and UC Berkeley, among others. Segal received his professional degree (1993) and M.Sc in Architecture (2001) from the Technion --Israel Institute of Technology. He is currently finishing his PhD dissertation at Princeton University entitled Unit, Pattern, Site; The Space-Packed Architecture of Alfred Neumann, which reveals Alfred Neumann's unique work in the 1960s and examines the relationship between tradition and modern architecture, and form and culture outside mainstream modernism. He has taught at the Faculty of Architecture and Town planning in the Technion and at Princeton University School of Architecture. Since 2006 he has been leading urban design and planning projects as an Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. As a designer and teacher he presupposes that architecture should not be taught or practiced without comprehending its broader urban, cultural and social-political context; Segal believes the study of architecture necessitates the study of the city, since buildings are both a product and a generator of the urban condition.