The penthouse designed by architect Raz Melamed provides a quiet escape in a busy city. Customers from abroad came to Melamed and asked for an apartment in Israel where they would feel at home, quite literally. Photography by Amit Geron.

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The property is in the heart of the city, and consists of a rooftop, two adjacent floors, and another apartment on a separate floor. In the design plan, the architect made sure to specify their requests: suites for children/guests, a kitchen for a chef who likes to entertain, an open view, a gym, libraries for displaying and storing books, and a library that will be a reading room.
Throughout the construction, the architect and the clients walked hand in hand, and the self-taught client wanted to learn about every dilemma and find a solution for it with the professionals
At first the path was full of challenges, which Melamed solved with professionalism and creativity. The first challenge was to connect two floors to create an internal passage. The solution was one staircase that opened in the ceiling of the lower floor, and a second staircase, which connects the accommodation area on the entrance floor to the pool on the roof.
The second challenge was the swimming pool on the roof, for which dedicated reinforcements were required. Another challenge was the implementation of minimal windows for the openings -these are windows that emphasize the architect’s concept, in which he makes sure to create large glass openings without partitions for the absolute introduction of light and air.
Since there were existing openings, the solution was sawing the skeleton of the space and creating gaps for the windows and showcases, including the elimination of partition columns for a perfect corner opening.
Another challenge was the diagonal walls in the building. For this, Melamed found original solutions in diagonal carpentry details designed for the bedrooms, or construction details –for example in the guest bathrooms, where the niches were covered with stone and flooded with lighting that emphasizes their diagonals, creating a fascinating architectural game of straight and crooked.