(b Tel Aviv, 14 June 1924). Son of (1) Ze'ev Rechter. He studied architecture at the Technion, Haifa (1943-7). In 1950 he joined in partnership with his father. After his father's death, Rechter continued in architectural practice with Moshe Zarhy (b 1923) (and in association with the engineer Menahem Peri) until 1973, when he established his own independent office in Tel Aviv. The period leading up to the 1980s was especially fruitful, including many major hotels, educational, public and office buildings, and urban-planning projects. While there is inventiveness and a rich diversity in Rechter's work, one may detect some persistent architectural themes. Notable, for instance, is his use of the cellular fa?ade. In some buildings, such as the Hilton hotels in Tel Aviv (1965) and Jerusalem (1974), the individual elements are either highly modelled or sharply faceted, uniting to generate a basically simple overall form of great surface intricacy. This was the leitmotif of his work of the late 1980s, for example the Technion's Graduate School of Business Administration (1988), with its overall cubic form composed of softly moulded curvilinear units. On the other hand, in the Mivtachim Resort Hotel (1968) at Zikhron Ya'aqov, for which Rechter was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize (1973), the individual cell is a simple rectilinear unit, assembled to generate a complex, undulating fa?ade. Either way, there is a tension between simplicity and complexity in Rechter's designs. The work is forceful and tends to dominate the site: most successfully at Zikhron Ya'aqov, perhaps more controversially in the Carmel Hospital (1978), Haifa. Work on an urban scale is represented by the housing scheme at Maalot Elram (1980), Jerusalem, and the promenade and waterfront development (1970-85) at Tel Aviv. In his reconstruction and radical expansion (1979) of Erich Mendelsohn's historic Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, Rechter, with great sensitivity, solved the contemporary problems with scrupulous respect for the integrity of Mendelsohn's sadly abused masterpiece, with a restraint reminiscent of the best of his father's work.
Part of the Rechter family
See the Abbreviations for further details.
