"תתחדש"

'Titchadesh' is a blessing unique to the Hebrew language. Its original form, 'Tivaleh vetitchadesh', blesses someone who has bought a new garment, with the intention that the individual will live long enough for the garment to wear out, necessitating a new one. Perhaps the omission of the word 'Tivaleh' is not accidental and indicates to our relationship with the things we buy. Today, we no longer wait for something to wear out; we just want to buy new. The excess production of the textile industry in general, and of fast fashion in particular, which have grown and developed within malls, leads to an incomprehensible social and environmental cost. Online commerce raises the question of the need for mall typology. Can these giant wasteful fortresses, which are becoming redundant within just a few decades, be part of the solution to the problems created by the fashion industry? How did we reach the absurd situation where, on one hand, we no longer have space or solutions for the waste we create, but on the other hand, we don't stop producing more and more, at a faster rate and in increasingly lower quality? This project proposes the reuse of the Ramat Aviv Mall (as a principle and practical model for reusing an existing structure) and presents a plan for a commercial system in which the used clothes of consumers become the raw material from which the goods sold in stores are made. The architectural intervention is based on a radical programmatic approach—a situation where a used garment that has reached the structure is treated, recycled, or reprocessed, and then only leaves the structure if purchased again, either as a refurbished or second-hand item, by a consumer. Through methods of emptying and filling, digging and completing the existing mall structure and its immediate surroundings, the architectural intervention seeks to transform the mall into a lively and local urban event, bringing public consumption spaces closer to the production, organization, and storage areas related to the clothes we wear.