Speaking of Collective Dining: The Spatial, Social and Semiotic Realities of the Communal Dining Room

Abstract

The production of a collective space was integral to establishing the kibbutz as an alternative social model in the 20th century. As important, was creating a spatial vocabulary by deconstructing domestic semiotic units, and scattering them over the collective terrain. The Hadar Ohel is one such example: enlarging the scale of the familial dining room, it maintains its premise as the center of home, providing kibbutz members with space for shared meals, intellectual exchange, and collective action. Both a term and a space, the Hadar Ohel has become an active entity shaping generations to come, reproducing the ideals based on which it was constructed. By the 21st century, most kibbutz communities had undergone various privatization processes. Amidst these transformations, what is the meaning of the Hadar Ohel today?
This article examines the material and semiotic realities inherent to the Hadar Ohel. By interviewing five kibbutz members, its changing meaning is traced through the alterations and permanences of its spaces, objects, and humans. Borrowing concepts from Actor-Network Theory, it is asserted as a substantial non-human actant in a dynamic network encompassing material and discursive realms. This case study unfolds around the axes of Fixation and Variability, In and Out, and Ordinary and Extraordinary, of which discussion demonstrates the Hadar Ohel as a liminal space where meaning is subject to constant translation but also participatory co-production.
A materialized collective discourse, the kibbutz dining room provides a peculiar albeit resourceful insight into the production of collective spaces and the ties between words and architecture.

Full text

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Superstudio, ‘Evasion Design and Invention Design’, in Superstudio: Life Without Objects, edited by Peter Land, William
Menking, 438-441. Milano: Skira, 2003.
Virilio, Paul. 1991. The Lost Dimension “ Los Angeles, CA: Semiotexte
Neyrat, Frederic. “Occupying the Future: Time and Politics in the Era of Clairvoyance Societies” in The Present of the Future,
edited by Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier, 79-90. Diaphenes. 2018.
Woertman, Sander. “The Distant Winking of a Star, or The Horror of the Real” in Exit utopia: Architectural Provocations 1956-
76, edited by Schaik M. van & Máel Otakar, 146-155. Munich: Prestel Pub, 2005.
Young, Liam. Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post Anthropocene. Newark: John Wiley & Sons Incorporated, 2019.
Biography
  is an architect and a PhD candidate at Istanbul Technical University in the Architectural Design program. Her
research explores the temporalities of architectural imagination and the spatio-politics of the city. She is interested in the topics
at the intersection of the theories of ethics and aesthetics. She has completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in
Architecture at Istanbul Technical University. She is a research assistant at Istinye University, Department of Architecture since
2019, and she contributes to architectural design studios.
Speaking of Collective Dining
The Spatial, Social and Semiotic Realities of the Kibbutz Dining Room
Zorea, Marine1,2
1. Kyoto Institute of Technology, Graduate School of Design and Architecture, Kyoto, Japan, marine.zorea@gmail.com
2. Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, MDes Industrial Design Program, Jerusalem, Israel, marine.zorea@post.bezalel.ac.il
Abstract
The production of a collective space was integral to establishing the kibbutz as an alternative social
model in the 20th century. As important, was creating a spatial vocabulary by deconstructing domestic
semiotic units, and scattering them over the collective terrain. The Hadar Ohel is one such example:
enlarging the scale of the familial dining room, it maintains its premise as the center of home,
providing kibbutz members with space for shared meals, intellectual exchange, and collective action.
Both a term and a space, the Hadar Ohel has become an active entity shaping generations to come,
reproducing the ideals based on which it was constructed. By the 21st century, most kibbutz
communities had undergone various privatization processes. Amidst these transformations, what is
the meaning of the Hadar Ohel today?
This article examines the material and semiotic realities inherent to the Hadar Ohel. By interviewing
five kibbutz members, its changing meaning is traced through the alterations and permanences of its
spaces, objects, and humans. Borrowing concepts from Actor-Network Theory, it is asserted as a
substantial non-human actant in a dynamic network encompassing material and discursive realms.
This case study unfolds around the axes of Fixation and Variability, In and Out, and Ordinary and
Extraordinary, of which discussion demonstrates the Hadar Ohel as a liminal space where meaning is
subject to constant translation but also participatory co-production.
A materialized collective discourse, the kibbutz dining room provides a peculiar albeit resourceful
insight into the production of collective spaces and the ties between words and architecture.
Key words: architecture, actor-network theory, dining, home, collective

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1. Introduction
Kibbutz (Hebrew: gathering, clustering; plural: Kibbutzim) are agricultural collectives that were formed
in Mandatory Palestine in the early half of the 20th century. A living realization of Marx's postulate -
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” it finds its roots in socialist
thought, but also in the Zionist ideal of a new Jewish society, distinguishable from the life of scholars
and traders in the diaspora.1 The first collective commune of Degania was formed in 1909 near the
Sea of Galilee. Since then, kibbutzim have multiplied across the land, becoming intrinsic to Israel’s
formation and its subsequent politics, culture, and society.
The kibbutz is a structured social entity, and concurrently a spatial one, built to carry its societal and
economic premise.2 Its layout was initially influenced by the centralized urban planning of the Garden
City Movement, itself, originally an alternative to capitalistic residential models.3 Nevertheless, it was
Bauhaus architecture, brought to Israel by former disciples, that contributed theoretical and
methodological foundations to address the kibbutz’s complex ideologic, social, economic and material
weave during the 1940s and 1950s, the era of its demographic and spatial expansion.4 The result was
the establishment of a first-of-its-kind functional typology, where typical specialized spaces of
individual urban dwellings (as of early 20th century Europe),5 were established as collective facilities
located at the center of the kibbutz terrain.6 These buildings were planned, utilized and operated in a
participatory manner by all kibbutz members,7 as devices to fulfill and sustain its ideological utopia. In
the words of Arieh Sharon, a Bauhaus disciple who played a pivotal role in the architecture of the
kibbutz and Israel: “These economic, social, and ideological developments naturally affected the
physical layout and the building character of the kibbutz. Architecture is, in a sense, the mirror of
society, but it should not be only a reflective, passive mirror, but also an active, guiding force, directing
future development of the community.”8
Parallel to this new set of buildings, a peculiar glossary and set of architectural terms emerged.
Semiotic units resonating with the domestic sphere, such as ‘Kitchen’ (Mitbah), 'Clothing Storage'
(Mahsan Begadim), or the children’s ‘Home' (Beit Yeladim), were deconstructed to represent collective
facilities and practices, such as where food is communally prepared, where clean clothes are put after
being washed in the communal laundry, and where infants and children are reared together,
respectively. But of most interest to our study is the Hadar Ohel (from Hebrew: Hadar - room, Ohel -
food), the kibbutz’s dining room.
The architectural term Dining Room has undergone major transformations throughout the 20th
century. In 19th century Europe, it was used to denote a space for middle- and upper-class
homeowners to socialize, while their ‘servants’ operated a separate kitchen, rarely attended by
architects at the time. Following the subsidizing of domestic labour in the early 20th century,
housewives were expected to take over domestic duties. Soon, kitchens became an attractive ground
for architects who sought to introduce industrial values into the domestic sphere, resulting in modernist
typologies such as the Frankfurt Kitchen, featuring an efficient spatial arrangement and novel electric
devices. The kitchen thus became a functional space while the dining room maintained its leisurely
and social meanings. With the nuclear family rise in significance in post-war western Europe and north
America, dining gradually took place in the kitchen, and by the 1970s the wall was lifted between the
kitchen and the dining space, making the Kitchen-Dining a central symbol of the private domestic
sphere, on both its practicalities and rituals, as well as a representation of the household’s social
status.9 Contrasting the individualistic dining room, the Soviet dining room (Russian: Stalovaya) is
another term of interest for this paper. Conceived in the 1920s and sustained throughout the Soviet
regime, Stalovaya were local collective canteens absent of gender or class division. They were made
to provide the Soviet worker with their “necessary material conditions”, but perhaps more importantly,
these facilities allowed the soviet regime to transmit its ideology through daily practice, in order to
generate the “new soviet person”.10
Stemming amongst these terms, the Hadar Ohel has always been a relatively large, sturdy and
centrally located space. While these structural and orientational qualities initially rose from the
necessity of providing 'Food' for working members, they afforded the realization of kibbutz ideology
through a 'Room' for collective gatherings, holidays, essential discussions and communal votes (fig.
1).11 It was not until the 1960s, however, that the Hadar Ohel's physical structure was built to match its
emblematic status: then, many kibbutzim replaced the shack used for dining with a multi-purpose
building complex that included kitchen, serving and dining areas, an adjacent 'Comrade Club' where
members could discuss and socialize, a theater, and surrounding grass fields where communal
celebrations and events took place. Soaring in the backdrop of the kibbutz’s functionally-driven
architecture, Hadar Ohel buildings are broadly distinguishable by their brutalist design, and while their
functions were largely standardized, each one was designed to reflect its respective kibbutz’s identity
and value system.12 In this way, the Hadar Ohel has become an icon, synonymous with the kibbutz's
spatial, social, and ideological center.
By the 21st century, most kibbutzim underwent radical organizational and economic changes, varying
from privatizing communal services to members’ differential earnings and the leading of economically
independent lives. Today, many Hadar Ohels serve food for profit, while others stand still and empty.
Stripped of the context that inscribed its formation and of which it constituted an indispensable part,
what is the current meaning of the Hadar Ohel?
Fig. 1
An interesting methodological lens from which to examine this question is Actor Network Theory
(ANT), where human and non-human actants, such as living beings, artifacts and spaces, are thought
of as active agents, forming dynamic networks of associations. According to ANT, actants are “not
simply the hapless bearers of symbolic projection”:13 all actants are capable of acting, affecting and
producing meaning, and networks form through their materially and discursively heterogeneous
relations.14 Rather than a theory, ANT is considered a family of material semiotics, “a set of tools and
sensibilities” for exploring the formation of those networks “that are simultaneously semiotic (because
they are relational, and/or they carry meanings) and material (because they are about the physical
stuff caught up and shaped in those relations).”15 While all actants in the network have the agency of
defining their associations with one another, sometimes the process of translation occurs. Callon
writes, “Translation involves creating convergences and homologies by relating things that were
previously different”.16 Translation happens when actants in the network are persuaded by others or
made to believe in certain common definitions.17 This process converges and fixates the associations
within a network, and so “the identity of actors, the possibility of interaction and the margins of
manoeuvre are negotiated and delimited”.18 Translation therefore renders actants the power to define
the associations between others, so they may match their interests.
ANT scholars have emphasized its potential in architecture as early as the 1990s, and its perspectives
and methodologies have since been applied in multiple architectural research projects.19 Its non-
hierarchical ontology resonates with that of the kibbutz. Furthermore, its emphasis on the dual role of
spatial artifacts - simultaneously a territory produced through associations between actants, and a
material actant with which other actants associate,20 is compatible with architectural study of the
kibbutz, a term indicating a social organization and a real location alike. Finally, ANT’s analytical
approach to understanding the ever-changing production of meaning is an interesting methodological
ground for inquiry into the entangled realities of the Hadar Ohel and its changing meanings.
This article takes an ANT approach, typically revolving around an empirically grounded case study,21
in this case, around the Hadar Ohel of kibbutz Maagan Michael. Built in the early 1970s, it has since
been extended and later went through interior renovation following its privatization. For the purpose of
this study, we engaged five kibbutz members and members’ children who have known the Hadar Ohel
since childhood, that they may describe their experience with the Hadar Ohel: specifically, the main
entrance, serving and dining areas within the general complex. By analyzing their relations with the
Hadar Ohel's space, artifacts, humans and the meanings of these associations, the discussion unfolds
around three axes: Fixation and Variability, In and Out, and Ordinary and Extraordinary. Throughout
the discussion, this essay depicts how the timeless definition of Hadar Ohel as a collective space, as
well as its changing meanings, are constructed and mediated by human, artifactual and spatial
actants. The Hadar Ohel space is demonstrated as a capable actant and concurrently as a network
containing humans, objects, machines and spatial elements, smells, tastes and noises, economic
forces and ideological beliefs, where contradictory meanings exist interchangeably. It is revealed as a
liminal place in-between translation and participatory co-production, where meanings are in constant
negotiation.
The kibbutz dining room, and that of Maagan Michael, is a rather specific architectural case study.
Nevertheless, this initial inquiry into this collective space and concept may provide insight with regards
to current challenges faced by the field of architecture. I hope this study sheds some light on the
elusive construction of collective space and its meanings.

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Fig. 2
2. Site and Methods
2.1. The Hadar Ohel of Maagan Michael - A Brief History
Maagan Michael was founded in the early 1940s by a group of approximately 20 members, and
moved by the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in 1949. It has since grown into a population of about
2100 inhabitants, around 950 of which are kibbutz members. The remainder include members'
families, contemporary residents and employees.
The focal point of this study is its Hadar Ohel, built in its current location and form early in the 1970s
by architect Yehuda Feigin, a brother to one of the kibbutz’s founders. At the time of its building, it
included two levels: the upper, including an entrance hallway, a small dining area, serving area, and
kitchen, and the lower level, including an elongated passageway, a theater, and a Comrade Club to
which the building extends (fig. 2). Spacious grass fields surround the Hadar Ohel and are considered
part of the complex. It is located at the center of the Kibbutz, and is surrounded by common facilities
such as grocery stores, a communal laundry facility, the Clothing Storage, and the post office. In the
early 1980s, following demographic growth, it was extended to include a second dining area south of
the former one, utilizing similar materials and structural forms but on a larger scale. Underneath, a
large amphitheater was built, and the existing passageway was elongated. Following a decision by
kibbutz members to privatize the Hadar Ohel in 2006, and the introduction of a fiscal compensation
model that did not exist thus far, the serving area underwent both renovation and reorganization.
Multiple new serving stations were brought in and positioned around the serving area, in contrast to
the former uniform elongated serving wagons. The renovation included the introduction of cashiers
and a pathway leading to it. On the material level, the former metal serving surfaces were replaced
with colored marble, and excluding the dining area, all floors on the upper level were replaced with
colored tiles - as opposed to the original black and grey terrazzo flooring.
The Hadar Ohel used to host three meals a day, seven days a week. Nowadays, the opening hours
decreased, and dinner is served only on Friday nights (Shabbat).
In this study, we will concentrate on this building and its metamorphosis through the years. While
inseparable from the complex and the Kibbutz as a whole, the scope of this study focuses on the main
entrance hallway (approx. 430 sqm), the serving area (approx. 130 sqm) and dining areas (approx.
950 sqm) found on the higher level of the complex.
2.2. Participants
The recruitment aimed to represent a wide range of ages, habits, and social practices related to the
Hadar Ohel. This study interviewed five people ranging in age from mid-20s to early 70s. Four
participants were born in Kibbutz Maagan Michael, two are second-generation Kibbutz founders and
two are third. One participant joined as a young child from another Kibbutz in the 1950s. Three identify
as women and two as men.
2.3. Method
ANT shares with ethnography the emphasis on everyday practices such as actions, activities, and
behaviors, and the environments, materials, and symbolic systems intertwined within these practices.
Both study the active processes by which people give meaning to the world and approach them with
sensitivity to heterogeneity and multiplicity.22 In light of these similarities, the data comprising this case
study was collected through ethnographic interviews of around 60 minutes.
The interviews were semi-structured, so while some pre-determined aspects were discussed in depth,
the conversation enabled participants to conjure memories, thoughts, and free associations. The
structure of the interview included questions regarding interaction with and perception of the material
aspects of the Hadar Ohel - its objects, machines, spatial components, as well as the food itself.
Particular attention was dedicated to affordances, the possibilities of action in one’s everyday
environment and objects,23 entailed either by form or by sociocultural practice.24 Participants were
further asked about aspects of human relations, whether interpersonal or communal, and lastly, for
their definition of the Hadar Ohel and its personal meaning to them, as well as about the changes it
may or may not have undergone.
The data was then transcribed and translated from Hebrew into English. This case study is built
around three thematic axes, emerged through an inductive thematic analysis on the data where the
data guides the analysis process.25 These axes are thereby described.
3. Emergent Themes and Discussion
3.1. Fixation and Variability
“The design is quite meager. But from this meagerness, blossoms the social interaction.” - participant
in her 30s
The long tables in the dining area exemplify the kibbutz realization of socialist ideology. Made to
accommodate 18 people at once, they afford members the timely sitting together and association with
one another (fig. 3). As one participant, in his 70s, recounts: “There are the usual tables. Each
'parliament' group has its table.” The tables imply, or even force, specific seating arrangements - but in
turn, produce a multiplicity of interpersonal associations between its human actants. Therefore, these
uniform furniture mediates meanings beyond food or the act of eating and contribute to the translation
of the Hadar Ohel as a place for communal gathering.
Similarly, the limited pre-privatization food menu (“food for the poor, for the proletarian” – participant in
his 50s), which is now abundant and varied, generated various human interactions. Buns served
exclusively on Mondays were a “celebration”. A salad made daily by a founder for his granddaughter
and her classmates while sitting at their table became a “famous salad” (participant in her 30s). Other
participatory and playful improvisation recalled by this participant include “a communal salad” caught
and eaten together from a tray, or ‘chocolate pudding’ she and her friends made of white cheese and
cocoa powder. These nutritional actants, while relatively uniform and meager, played a part in co-
defining the Hadar Ohel as a space for play and recreation. As shared by one participant in her 20s:
“Flavor was not important, it was not supposed to be fun … But the Hadar Ohel was a good hangout,
even without intending to be.” However “meager”, these uniform material actants of the Hadar Ohel
produced precious processes of conviviality, where creative associations are autonomously generated
among humans and within their environments. In Illich’s words, people need “above all the freedom to
make things among which they live, or give shape to them according to their own shape, and to put
them to use in caring for and about others.”26
Another steady material actant inviting plural interactions is the entrance hallway and its informational
functions. In the past, this area featured the only radio and television in the kibbutz, and it includes
bulletin boards to date. However, some participants noted the information gathered at the Hadar Ohel
is of social character: “It is a place for information. Our senses in the Hadar Ohel are not those of food
or taste, but social senses.” (participant in her 30s). The entrance hallway is described as instrumental
to such information exchange: its inevitable location in the building layout makes it an obligatory
passage to the serving and dining areas, its long structure encourages passage and movement, and it
is spacious enough to host multiple greetings and casual conversations. This unchanged buffer space
then contributes to the translation of the Hadar Ohel as a lively space for passing information. As one
participant in his 70s described: “I sometimes enter the Hadar Ohel, not to eat: I go, I pass … have a
quick tour to have a look, pass by the bulletin board to see if there’s something new, and swoosh, get
out.”
In some artifacts, consistency over time generated various affective depictions. Some members, for
instance, refuse to use the new trays introduced in recent years to the so-called “Hadar Ohel eating
utensils set”, titled by a participant in her 20s, that had remained unchanged for the past 20 years (fig.
3). One participant fondly recalls the old chairs, describing their wooden materiality as heavy,
comforting, and homey (compared to new ones, made of light plastic and plywood). Of withstanding
material and spatial invariability are the Hadar Ohel building itself and its central location. These
properties have been essential in inducing definitions such as the “center of life” (participant in her
20s) or “of the community” (participant in her 60s), “home” (multiple), and “heart” (participant in his
50s).
It is possible that the Hadar Ohel’s tension of uniformity and variability has roots in architectural
modernity that is “enmeshed in two opposing stances: one of efficiency and instrumentalization of
reason and the other of open structures, connectivity, and transition”.27 However, what is interesting
about the Hadar Ohel’s functionally driven, uniform material actants is that they induce social
multiplicity - in the formation of familial associations between human actants, in the invention of
common activities and practices, and affective meanings. Space here is not open and limitless, and at
the same time does not dictate a specific set of actions. Its translation as a shared space is not
achieved solely through material actants but is dependent on the unpredictable, inventive and

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participatory performance of others. Architecture here is not an imposed static object, but can rather
be described as a lively and transformative ecology,28,29 where fixed material actants are designed to
be extended through multiple associations between human actants and otherwise. This unique
plurality of the Hadar Ohel resonates with Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis concept of porosity: “As
porous as this stone is the architecture. Building and action interpenetrate in the courtyards, arcades,
and stairways. In everything they preserve the scope to become a theater of new, unforeseen
constellations. The stamp of the definitive is avoided. No situation appears intended forever, no figure
asserts it is thus and not otherwise.”30
Fig. 3
3.2. In and out
“(Hadar Ohel) is a room inside of the general home called kibbutz.” - participant in his 50s
As a 'Home' that is located outside, the Hadar Ohel conjures a material and discursive tension of in
and out. On the one hand, it has always been an inclusive space, inviting in all comrades, regardless
of age or occupation. As told by one participant in her 60s: “Each would come with their clothing, their
agricultural occupation, their smells…” On the other, the privatization was followed by the introduction
of external monetary concepts, artifacts, and human actants to the Hadar Ohel, and by practices of
confinement and exclusion.
In the past, all dishes were accessed freely from stainless steel gastronomes. Nowadays, however,
main dishes are positioned in a closed section behind glass plates, and served by employees. Some
dishes are now packaged inside boxes in prefixed quantities. One participant in her 20s describes:
“From a dish put in gastronomes among others, it becomes a dish enclosed within small plastic boxes
…”. Previously tangible dishes are now positioned in enclosed borders made of glass and plastic, from
which members are excluded. These material boundaries mediate the translation of food, a core
element in Hadar Ohel’s res communis - the common-pool resources shared by the community - as a
monetized commodity.31
Material actants of the Hadar Ohel not only contain food, but also humans: partitions made of walls,
food serving wagons and coffee machines surround the serving area, generating a designated path
where the utensils stand is defined as ‘entrance’, and the cashiers an obligatory 'exit' passage. Those
confining spatial and artifactual actors mediate external economic and cultural meanings: “At first, the
renovation seemed like a hotel” (participant in her 30s), and “it is a wonderful restaurant” (participant in
her 60s). The interior renovation of the serving area has been indispensable to translating the Hadar
Ohel as a profit-oriented facility. As shared by a participant in her 20s, “The renovation of the Hadar
Ohel inaugurated its privatization.”
Another in and out tension manifests around the Hadar Ohel’s operation. One participant in his 50s
shared: “The Hadar Ohel is not a word, it is a term. It (describes) eating there, doing duty rosters,
working there.” Since its beginning, members not only utilized but also operated the Hadar Ohel, and
were therefore familiar with its various corners, cooking machinery and fridges, to which they had
uninterrupted access. Sneaking together at night to the kitchen, taking food from those fridges and
“opening a table” (female participant, 30s) was common among youth. These practices reflected the
community’s ideology and culture. Nowadays, members are restricted from entering the kitchen,
despite it being structurally accessible. External employees have joined the network, and while their
movement isn’t confined, participants feel an external class system was introduced to the previously
equal space. Some participants shared: “it is no longer a free space” or, “not my place, not my home
anymore.” It is not the introduction of external employees so much as the translation of the relations
between these new employees and members with the external concepts of ‘Service Personnel’ and
‘Customers’, and the redefinition of each’s margins of manoeuvre that has disturbed participants.
The Hadar Ohel manifests a paradoxical tension of in and out: in some cases, its spatial inclusion
mediates the meaning of care and protection, resonating with Gaston Bachelard’s poetic image, at
once material and poetic, describing the manners in which roofs, basements, corners, and drawers
are endowed by inhabitants with the perceptible meaning of ‘shelter’ that is the ‘home’.32 However,
when such spatial inclusion interferes with members’ freedom and manoeuvres their actions, it may
mediate the meaning of boundary and confinement. Furthermore, in ANT perspective, inhabitants are
not the only actants capable of transforming an architecture: it is changeable by all those frequenting it
and residing within it.33 Whereas in the case of Hadar Ohel’s longterm inhabitants - kibbutz members -
uninterrupted spatial access means inclusion, for employees this access makes tangible their social
and economic exclusion. This tension gives rise to critical considerations of architectural circulation
and partition, to be taken when designing a truly collective space.
3.3. Ordinary and Extraordinary
“There’s something rather enjoyable about ascending from the fields or the groves, after working one's
tail off since the early morning …” - participant in his 50s
The word ascending, used to describe the way to the Hadar Ohel, holds an ordinary meaning and also
an extraordinary one. The above participant truthfully describes the topology of the kibbutz: the Hadar
Ohel is, indeed, located atop a hill, surrounded by a lower level of dwellings and educational facilities,
while agricultural groves and fields are located on the kibbutz’s lowest terrain. At the same time,
“ascending” (in Hebrew: Laalot) denotes a spiritual pilgrimage, or more specifically, “ascending” to
Jerusalem - itself located on mountains. Other participants elaborated on this idea through the analogy
of the Hadar Ohel and the synagogue (of which etymology in Hebrew is ‘gather’), with one saying:
“Each community has its own belief, its own special building, whether a church, a mosque, or a
synagogue” (participant in her 60s). The word “ascending” is often articulated by members without
uttering the term ‘Hadar Ohel’: “Once school is finished, everybody ascends together” (participant in
her 20s). It is clear to all comrades that there is only one place on which to ascend: the top of the hill,
the spiritual core of the collective. Both Jerusalem and the Hadar Ohel encompass, even transcend,
social and material associations in their meaning. In the words of social geographer Doreen Massey:
“What is special about the place is not some romance of a pre-given collective identity or the eternity
of the hills. Rather, what is special about place is precisely that thrown togetherness, the unavoidable
challenge of negotiating a here-and-now … and a negotiation which must take place within and
between both human and non-human.”34
The original premise of the Hadar Ohel has transformed over the years. The individual home gradually
became the focal point of everyday living, especially following the introduction of familial (as opposed
to communal) child rearing in the early 1980s, and the Hadar Ohel’s privatization, resulting in larger
and fuller individual kitchens and dwellings. In the words of one participant in her 20s, “The Hadar
Ohel is the scattered functionality of home, when the home already has everything you need.” And yet
the dining room remains a space of unique significance to kibbutz members. This liminal state
manifests in participants’ associative metaphors to the Hadar Ohel today: one described it as an
“anchor'' or a “backup”; a place tied to her past that she wishes to preserve in order to secure the
future; another described it as a “mirror of one's personal situation” reflected by the gaze of others;
one person defined it as an exterritorial space, “an island … an autonomy, belonging to everybody, but
has its own rules”, while another as a hybrid organ: “The beating stomach of the community”, adding,
“Before, it was a bit of heart.” The Hadar Ohel is a hybrid space in constant translation, moving
interchangeably between the quotidian and transcendent, present and past, sameness and otherness
- in processes occurring in-between actants, but also within actants themselves. If the kibbutz was
founded as a living and materialized utopia, the Hadar Ohel today is, perhaps, a Foucauldian
heterotopia: “Places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are
something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other
real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and
inverted.”35 As in heterotopia, the Hadar Ohel is an existing physical space, frequented daily by human
actants and inhabited by constant artifacts. Yet it is an extraordinary space of which alternating
meanings are proliferated through the entangled social, material and semiotic conditions within which
it exits.
4. Conclusion
The spatial and symbolic center of home, Hadar Ohel bears a resemblance to the emblematic
familiality of the individualistic 'Dining Room' discussed in the introduction. Parallelly, the Hadar Ohel
compares to the Soviet dining room, forming a functional and social device within a collective
ideological system. But the Hadar Ohel neither revolves around a pre-existing family unit as does the
former term, nor is it conceptualized as part of the unidirectional bequeathing of political values and
rules as the latter. Rather than a predetermined description, Hadar Ohel is demonstrated here as a

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capable spatial actant as well as a dynamic network, of which material and symbolic weave are in
continuous reconfiguration. It is an instance where architecture forms a vital force in the construction
and deconstruction of familial relations or common conventions, affecting, in turn, architectural
meanings.
Future work may expand this paper’s scope to include the Hadar Ohel entire complex, its location in
the kibbutz and perhaps other kibbutzim. Nevertheless, this study sheds first light on the constant
translation of the Hadar Ohel as one entity or another, and the continuous co-production of meaning
through associations between its heterogeneous actants. This fluid definition of the Hadar Ohel
renders a constant liminal state: this space is neither fixed nor varied, neither inside nor outside,
neither ordinary nor extraordinary. Perhaps for this reason it may be best interpreted through liminal
spatial concepts encompassing materials and symbols, such as Bachelard’s poetic image, Benjamin
and Lacis’s porous or Foucault’s heterotopia - at the same time imaginative and ephemeral, and yet
concretized and real.
The particular case of the kibbutz dining room is potentially relevant to architecture nowadays. The
entangled ties between its human and material actants may contribute to understanding humans’
relations with (and definition of) spaces and artifacts in built environments, a topic which poses a
challenge today.36 Furthermore, as a functional building type on the one hand and the host of
unpredictable associations on the other, it provides hints towards endowing urban built environments
with openness and conviviality with which they occasionally lack.37,38 The material mediation of codes
and values within the Hadar Ohel can be of critical consideration for architects and scholars tracing
the spatial manifestations of social conventions applied and constructed within shared spaces.39 And
finally, the affective, at times transcendent collective meaning of Hadar Ohel, withstanding major
transformations in the configuration of its spatial and artifactual resources, its social practices and
codes - put forth the significance of participatory spatial conceptualizations, co-produced through
cooperation and shared habit, play and ritual.
How can one read the architectural elements making a collective space, such as the kibbutz dining
room? What actants and their qualities possess the agency of redefining a space as collective, what
entanglements make such definition timeless? Such questions form an intriguing point of departure for
future research on the participatory construction and definition of space.
Notes
1. Schüler, Ronny. 2019. “Forms, Ideals, and Methods. Bauhaus Transfers to Mandatory Palestine.” Wolkenkuckucksheim |
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land |  International Journal of Architectural Theory. 24, no. 39: 11-33.
2. Kahana, Freddy. Neither village nor city - Architecture of the Kibbutz 1910-1990. Ramat Gan: Yad Tabenkin, 2011.
3. Kahana, Freddy. Neither village nor city - Architecture of the Kibbutz 1910-1990. Ramat Gan: Yad Tabenkin, 2011.
4. Schüler, Ronny. 2019. “Forms, Ideals, and Methods. Bauhaus Transfers to Mandatory Palestine.” Wolkenkuckucksheim |
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land |  International Journal of Architectural Theory. 24, no. 39: 11-33.
5. Lawrence, Roderick J. “Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space” en: Kent, susan. Public Collective and Private Space: A
Study of Urban Housing in Switzerland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
6. Kahana, Freddy. Neither village nor city - Architecture of the Kibbutz 1910-1990. Ramat Gan: Yad Tabenkin, 2011.
7. Schüler, Ronny. 2019. “Forms, Ideals, and Methods. Bauhaus Transfers to Mandatory Palestine.” Wolkenkuckucksheim |
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land |  International Journal of Architectural Theory. 24, no. 39: 11-33.
8. Sharon, Arieh. 1976. Kibbutz+Bauhaus. An Architect’s Way in a New Land. Tel Aviv/Stuttgart: Krämer.
9. Bech-Danielsen, Claus. 2012. “The Kitchen: An Architectural Mirror of Everyday Life and Societal Development”. Journal of
Civil Engineering and Architecture, 6(4), 457-469.
10. Nérard, François-Xavier. 2014. “Nourrir les constructeurs du socialisme. Cantines et question alimentaire dans l'URSS des
premiers plans quinquennaux (1928-1935)”. Le Mouvement Social, 247, 85-103.
11. Kahana, Freddy. Neither village nor city - Architecture of the Kibbutz 1910-1990. Ramat Gan: Yad Tabenkin, 2011.
12. Kahana, Freddy. Neither village nor city - Architecture of the Kibbutz 1910-1990. Ramat Gan: Yad Tabenkin, 2011.
13. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
14. Law, John. “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics” en: Turner, Brian. The New Blackwell Companion to Social
Theory. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008.
15. Law, John. Material semiotics. www.heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2019MaterialSemiotics.pdf (accessed 23 May
2023).
16. Callon, Michel. “Struggles and Negotiations to Define what is Problematic and what is not: The Socio-logics of Translation”
en: Knorr, K., Krohn, R. and Whitley, R. The Social Process of Scientific Investigation. Dordecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co.,
1980.
17. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
18. Callon, Michel. “Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc
Bay” en: Law, John. Power, action and belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.
19. Yaneva, Albena and Mommersteeg, Brett. “How does an ANT approach help us rethink the notion of site?” en: Blok, A.,
Farias, I. and Roberts, C. The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory. London: Routledge, 2019.
20. Kärrholm, Mattias. 2004. The Territoriality of Architecture - Contributions to a Discussion on Territoriality and Architectural
Design within the Public Spaces of the City. Sweden: Lund University.
21. Law, John. “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics” en: Turner, Brian. The New Blackwell Companion to Social
Theory. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008.
22. Nimmo, Richie. “Actor-Network Theory and Methodology: Social Research in a More-Than-Human World”. Methodological
Innovations Online. 6: 108-119, 2011.
23. Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
24. Rietveld, Erik and Kiverstein, Julian. 2014. “A Rich Landscape of Affordances”. Ecological Psychology. 26, no. 4: 325–52.
25. Braun, Virginia and Clarke, Victoria. 2006. “Using thematic analysis in psychology”. Qualitative Research in Psychology. 3,
no. 2: 77-101.
26. Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 2009.
27. Wolfrum, Sophie. “Porosity - Porous City” en: Wolfrum, Sophie. Porous City: From Metaphor to Urban Agenda. Basel:
Birkhäuser, 2018.
28. Picon, Antoine and Ponte, Alessandra. 2003. Architecture and the sciences: exchanging metaphors. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press.
29. Latour, Bruno and Yaneva, Albena. 2008. “«Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move»: An ANT’s View of
Architecture”. Ardeth. 1, no. 10.
30. Benjamin, Walter and Lacis, Asja. “Naples (1925)”. en: Demetz, Peter, trans: Jephcott, Edmund. Reflections: Essays,
Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. ed. New York: Schocken, 1978.
31. Avermaete, Tom. “Constructing the Commons” en: Medrano, L., Luiz Recamán, I. and Avermaete, T. The New Urban
Condition. New York: Routledge, 2021.
32. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. London, England: Penguin Classics, 2014.
33. Kjetil Fallan. 2008. “Architecture in action: Traveling with actor-network theory in the land of architectural research”.
Architectural Theory Review. 13, no. 1: 80-96.
34. Massey, Doreen B. For Space. London: Sage, 2015.
35. Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Of other spaces”. Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism. 16, no. 1.
36. Avermaete, Tom. 2018. “The socius of architecture: spatialising the social and socialising the spatial”. The Journal of
Architecture. 23, no. 4: 537-542.
37. Avermaete, Tom. 2018. “The socius of architecture: spatialising the social and socialising the spatial”. The Journal of
Architecture. 23, no. 4: 537-542.
38. Wolfrum, Sophie. “Porosity - Porous City” en: Wolfrum, Sophie. Porous City: From Metaphor to Urban Agenda. Basel:
Birkhäuser, 2018.
39. Avermaete, Tom. “Constructing the Commons” en: Medrano, L., Luiz Recamán, I. and Avermaete, T. The New Urban
Condition. New York: Routledge, 2021.
Image Captions
Fig. 1. Kibbutz Maagan Michael members’ communal committee at the Hadar Ohel, 1970s.
Fig. 2. Original west elevation drawing of Maagan Michael Hadar Ohel complex. The long entrance passageway on the left is
followed by the smaller dining area on the right.
Fig. 3. Left. kibbutz dining room’s eating utensils. Right. members sit together for lunch at the collective elongated tables.
References
Avermaete, Tom. 2018. “The socius of architecture: spatialising the social and socialising the spatial”. The Journal of
Architecture. 23, no. 4: 537-542.
Avermaete, Tom. “Constructing the Commons” en: Medrano, L., Luiz Recamán, I. and Avermaete, T. The New Urban Condition.
New York: Routledge, 2021.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. London, England: Penguin Classics, 2014.

critic | all
critic | all
368
369 back to index
back to index
Bech-Danielsen, Claus. 2012. “The Kitchen: An Architectural Mirror of Everyday Life and Societal Development”. Journal of Civil
Engineering and Architecture, 6(4), 457-469.
Benjamin, Walter and Lacis, Asja. “Naples (1925)”. en: Demetz, Peter, trans: Jephcott, Edmund. Reflections: Essays,
Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. ed. New York: Schocken, 1978.
Braun, Virginia and Clarke, Victoria. 2006. “Using thematic analysis in psychology”. Qualitative Research in Psychology. 3, no.
2: 77-101.
Callon, Michel. “Struggles and Negotiations to Define what is Problematic and what is not: The Socio-logics of Translation” en:
Knorr, K., Krohn, R. and Whitley, R. The Social Process of Scientific Investigation. Dordecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1980.
Callon, Michel. “Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay”
en: Law, John. Power, action and belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.
Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Of other spaces”. Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism. 16, no. 1.
Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 2009.
Kahana, Freddy. Neither village nor city - Architecture of the Kibbutz 1910-1990. Ramat Gan: Yad Tabenkin, 2011.
Kärrholm, Mattias. 2004. The Territoriality of Architecture - Contributions to a Discussion on Territoriality and Architectural
Design within the Public Spaces of the City. Sweden: Lund University.
Kjetil Fallan. 2008. “Architecture in action: Traveling with actor-network theory in the land of architectural research”. Architectural
Theory Review. 13, no. 1: 80-96.
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Latour, Bruno and Yaneva, Albena. 2008. “«Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move»: An ANT’s View of
Architecture”. Ardeth. 1, no. 10.
Law, John. “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics” en: Turner, Brian. The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory.
Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008.
Law, John. Material semiotics. www.heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2019MaterialSemiotics.pdf (accessed 23 May 2023).
Lawrence, Roderick J. “Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space” en: Kent, susan. Public Collective and Private Space: A
Study of Urban Housing in Switzerland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Nérard, François-Xavier. 2014. “Nourrir les constructeurs du socialisme. Cantines et question alimentaire dans l'URSS des
premiers plans quinquennaux (1928-1935)”. Le Mouvement Social, 247, 85-103.
Massey, Doreen B. For Space. London: Sage, 2015.
Nimmo, Richie. 2011. “Actor-Network Theory and Methodology: Social Research in a More-Than-Human World”.
Methodological Innovations Online. 6: 108-119.
Picon, Antoine and Ponte, Alessandra. 2003. Architecture and the sciences: exchanging metaphors. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press.
Rietveld, Erik and Kiverstein, Julian. 2014. “A Rich Landscape of Affordances”. Ecological Psychology. 26, no. 4: 325–52.
Schüler, Ronny. 2019. “Forms, Ideals, and Methods. Bauhaus Transfers to Mandatory Palestine.” Wolkenkuckucksheim |
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land |  International Journal of Architectural Theory. 24, no. 39: 11-33.
Wolfrum, Sophie. “Porosity - Porous City” en: Wolfrum, Sophie. Porous City: From Metaphor to Urban Agenda. Basel:
Birkhäuser, 2018.
Yaneva, Albena and Mommersteeg, Brett. “How does an ANT approach help us rethink the notion of site?” en: Blok, A., Farias,
I. and Roberts, C. The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory. London: Routledge, 2019.
Biography
Marine Zorea is an artist, researcher and designer based in Japan and Israel. She holds a BA in Psychology from Tel Aviv
University and MSc in Product Design from Kyoto Institute of Technology, where she currently pursues her PhD research on
interaction design for objects of the domestic sphere. She currently teaches design research methodologies at the Masters
Program in Insudtrial Design at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. Zorea is third generation to kibbutz Maagan
Michael founders.

Organized by:
Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Department of Architecture
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Delft University of Technology