Sad news from Berlin. On September 24, 2023, at the age of 92, Zvi Hecker, an Israeli architect of Polish descent who was professionally active for more than sixty years, working in Israel, Germany and Poland, among other places, passed away.
Zvi Hecker was born in May 1931 in Cracow as Tadeusz Heker. He began his architectural education while still at the Cracow Polytechnic, which he continued in Israel, where he emigrated in the 1950s.
In Israel, the architect designed the Spiral House in Ramat Gan, the city hall in Bat Yam and the Palm History Museum in Tel Aviv, among others. In the 1990s he moved to Germany - there he set up an office and began working on projects such as the Jewish School (Heinz-Galinski Schule) building in Berlin.
Zvi Hecker participated in many international competitions - including the design of Republic Square, the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Monument to Freedom and Unity in front of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. He also frequently submitted his designs to competitions in Poland - the Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the Centre for Dialogue Breakthroughs in Szczecin, and for the design of the complex of buildings of the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Cracow (in cooperation with Atelier Loegler Architekci), in which the team received an honorable mention.
The architect was professionally active for more than sixty years. A few months ago, in an interview conducted for A&B(05|23) by Marcin Szczodry , Hecker spoke about his work, the role of architecture and the places that shaped him:
So far, I don't feel much difference between working in this age and the one in which one normally works. I have often heard the question, where are my roots actually? In Samarkand, in Krakow, in Tel Aviv or in Berlin? My roots are here and there, but in fact I always carry them with me. So I can say that I draw from my roots all the time, just in a different place, but on the same planet.
