Abadi house, being a row house, was our first case-study dealing with the side-setback in suburbia. Since lands designated for building in Israel had been in a great short, We were most troubled by the fact that the side-setback area of the lot "goes to waste"  and at the end is no more then a buffer zone.

Our starting point, therefore, was a lot with 3 sides facing a garden, and on the 4th side a constraint, which could easily have become a forth blocked facade going all through the house. For us, it was an opportunity to examine what can be done with this connection. Therefore our first step was to build a separating wall, stretching from the front setback to the rear, as high as the height limitations allowed. the second step was to create a 1.2 meters wide patio between the separating wall and the house, on the front part of the lot. the third step was to design levels in stead of floors, in order to enhance eye contact between different parts of the house.

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The outcome of the two first steps described above is a most sophisticated space running all through the forth side of the house. In the front, the patio creates a forth facade that ventilates service rooms in this part the house; In the living area there are views to the high patio both towards the street and to the back yard; The tall space created in the living room is ventilated through high windows on the west side, and light enters through windows on the south and north sides; We chose  to finish the "separating" wall, which defines the living room, with an outdoor plaster; from the children room adjacent to the patio there is a little window used for a child doll collection.

All these components assembly into a space that functions as a continuation af the patio - a space which is between outside and inside.

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The west side of the house which allegendly enjoys a full facade to a garden actually doesn't need it at all, none of the windows facing it is critical and in fact, we could have let this facad go and design a sophisticated space on this side too. Simply calculating, we could have earned a forth lot over every 3 lots in the same street and on the same neighborhood lowering each lot's price by at least 25%.

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