ABSTRACT
Yokne’am Illit is a new town of 25,000 inhabitants, situated in a hilly area some ten kilometres south of Haifa. Shehunat HaTemanim – the Yemenite neighbourhood and Shehunat HaKurdim – the Kurdish neighbourhood, the two older areas of Yokne’am Illit, were built in the fifties as humble housing solutions for new immigrants. The original plans for the neighbourhoods are referred to as and when relevant. The neighbourhoods can, therefore, be considered as good examples of successful housing patterns, adjustable to changing conditions. The analysis concentrates on three issues: ‘the positive’ – that is the built objects; ‘the negative’ – that is the unbuilt areas, either privately owned or shared by several households and functionally defined or undefined; the relationships between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. The original houses were low and appeared even lower because of their small overall volume.
