A working life in architecture

Benjamin Muchawsky was born in Bogotá on 26 January 1941, to parents who had escaped Poland just before the war — bringing with them their shtetl way of life and their love for Zion. He trained as an architect in Colombia and founded his first practice there with Heinz Juliusburger under the name H. Juliusburger & B. Muchawsky — Architects and Town-planners, with offices on Horkanus Street.

In 1965, towards the end of his M.A. studies, he was recruited by an envoy of the Jerusalem Municipality looking for architects in South America. A year later he was working on the Jerusalem 1984 Master Plan team under Professor Hashimshoni; after the Six Day War expanded the city's boundaries, the team began the entirely new Jerusalem 2000 Master Plan — what would prove to be the city's last comprehensive professional master plan.

To answer UNESCO's claims that Jerusalem was losing its historic character, Mayor Teddy Kollek established a Planning Office for the Old City and its surroundings under Arieh Sharon and Anatol Brutskus. Working alongside them and Muni Hayat, Muchawsky made most of the designs and drawings, and joined periodic reviews with visiting architects such as Bruno Zevi and Louis Kahn — a training ground he describes as the foundation of his independent practice.

In 1969, after a chance conversation at Café Atara with David Mir — who was looking for architects for the Ephrata neighbourhood (now Har Homa) and the Rose Garden housing project — he and Juliusburger opened their private office. The partnership lasted until 2005.

His built and restored work in Israel includes the Lutheran Augusta Victoria compound on the Mount of Olives, the Lutheran Hostel and Redeemer Church compound in the Muristan, the Open-Air Yemenite Museum (Rosh Ha'ayin, Netanya, Rehovot), the Lions Fountain Park (Jerusalem, 1989), the Yardenit Baptism Site on the Jordan, the Faculty of Metallurgy, the Ussishkin Building in Tel Aviv, and a long series of houses and town-planning schemes — including the award-winning Rose Garden ("Best Housing Project of the Eighties") and the best-selling "Growing House".

He continues to draw and to write. In 2022 he gathered his architectural projects together with personal reflections and paintings into a single illustrated volume, My Legacy (Graphos Press), from which this site is drawn. Earlier publications include Planning Jerusalem — the Old City and its Environs (Keter Press, 1973) and Old City of Jerusalem Bazaars & Commercial Streets (Jerusalem Post Press, 1972).