Jonathan Groswasser

What achievements are you most proud of?
I've co-designed numerous buildings along with the principal architect and owner, Avner Yashar, in Israel and around the world. One of the most note-worthy is the biggest R&D development site for Apple outside the U.S., which is in Israel. Now we're designing a 45,000 square-meter R&D center with Microsoft here too. We have done quite a few residential and office towers. At the moment we're designing the tallest building in Israel at 110 stories. Our design is focused on "place making": we try to achieve architecture that is beautiful and efficient, and to create a building that has a sense of place.

What is the creative environment in Israel for an architect?
Tel Aviv is a mecca for modern and international style architecture. One of the difficulties that we have is a lack of land; it's a very dense country, and this leads to the need for a lot of high-rise and mixed-use buildings. Density means that these buildings will have a large amount of retail on the lower floors of the new office towers. Developments often have residential and office towers built side by side. There's a big challenge in incorporating all the elements in these building clusters while making them pleasant and functional spaces with a sense of place.

What are the most important factors in lighting architecture?

Light is an essential part of architecture and it brings out its essence. Architecture is the play of light and shade. For example, for the BMW Mini Showroom project in Tel Aviv, we were looking for very soft ambient light, very evenly spread, and not challenging, competing or interfering with the architecture of the building. We wanted to keep the feeling of open space, very much in the spirit of the architecture of the building, with the ceiling evenly and purely lit.