Keren Faigon

Loop City | A new metropolis in Israel

The project proposes to create a new metropolis in Israel along and alongside the railway tracks, while changing the layout of the existing railway lines and turning them into circular loops. The city creates a connection between the always-moving space of the train and the built space next to it and offers a new perspective of what else a train could be. The narrow, longitudinal city spread over the entire country offers itself as a new public city in Israel while challenging the concepts of 'periphery' and 'center'. The train, whose purpose today is to reach the destination quickly, represents a new urbanity in this scenario. The train is a unique, public means of transportation. It is a bubble that moves in time and space, in a changing connection with its environment. The uniqueness of the railway stems from the fact that it is a network of independent infrastructure that stretches for thousands of kilometers. Thanks to this, the train invites technological advances that allow it to increase its speed constantly. By being a closed system with its own set of rules and methods that operate it, the train becomes separate from the outside world, and this produces a space with internal logic through which it operates. The concept of the train has changed over the last hundred years, and in this project we offer a new role arising from a new concept of the train. In Israel, there are about 1,500 kilometers of railroads, with about fifty meters on both sides of the railway as areas belonging to the "Israel Railways" where it is forbidden by law to build anything. The project proposes to use the infrastructure of the existing railway lines in Israel and the unused area along the tracks, to create a new metropolis. The existence of the city is made possible thanks to a unique method of travel. Disconnecting carriages from each other and passing carriages between one train to another produces a continuous journey from anywhere to everywhere without the need to get off the train. The new train route offers a ride in the route of a loop. In this way, the road becomes endless, which allows for a variety of events that last an hour, a day or an entire lifetime, while staying on the train and in the city encompassing it. Today there are four metropolitan areas in Israel. The new metropolis that spans the entire country offers a new perspective on national planning which can be projected to anywhere in the world. The train becomes a destination in itself while preserving the values of experience and speed. We offer the new metropolis as a space that combines diverse programs intertwined, a space where everything can be done from anywhere. A new metropolis, befitting of the age in which we live today, the age of simultaneity.