Herman Zonderand
Urbanist

The designer of Hometown Glory hopes that his project will make people look at the conflict between Palestine and Israel in another way. He succeeds convincingly in that objective. […] The basic urban intervention is original, endows to the border zone with meaning and captures the imagination. […] The project gets to the very heart of the matter and emerges as a highly effective political statement. It is one of the few entries to map out an attractive and positive perspective for a future that is still some way off and hard to fathom. Time, always a difficult aspect, has been adressed with great intelligence in this project.” [Jury Report – Archiprix 2012]

A new direction for an area with limited perspectives is most evident in the poetic proposal by Herman Zonderland for the wall in Jerusalem. […] Zonderland presentes a project full of desirable beauty and poetry at the epic centre of a religious and geopolitical conflict. The design does not come with an implementation timetable, even though you might long to witness its construction. Instead, it is a utopia. It encourages us to dream, and at the same time confronts us with the harsh reality of war, struggle and lack of understanding. It’s a project that sticks in de mind forever once you’ve seen it. That’s the power of a design scheme. And that’s the power of the designer.” [Rogier van den Berg – Grand Perspectives]