The Next Station

The project explores a rare urban moment unfolding in Tel Aviv, created by the overlap of two infrastructures in transition. Gas stations, introduced in the 1920s and long embedded in the national fabric, have gradually become “transparent” sites – purely functional yet detached from community life. Today, driven by economic, regulatory, and environmental forces, most of these stations are set to be cleared, often replaced by generic real-estate projects that contribute little to the surrounding neighborhoods.

In parallel, the city is building a new mass-transit system of light rail and metro lines – a metropolitan infrastructure reshaping streets, mobility, and the public realm. Mapping revealed that nearly half of Tel Aviv’s gas stations lie directly along this emerging network. This overlap creates a unique opportunity: to transform vacant fuel plots into a new kind of urban infrastructure.

The central question guiding the work is how to redefine the evacuation of gas stations along transit corridors so that what once served as invisible operational sites may become social and communal anchors for the city.

The project proposes a decentralized network of public nodes, linked by the transit system as a “horizontal elevator.” Each node is layered: an active public ground plane, underground spaces adapted for neighborhood uses, elevated floors for educational and cultural programs, and an economic stratum ensuring feasibility. The Red Line, and specifically Eliphelet Station, serve as a detailed case study, showing how a former fuel site can be reimagined as an active urban hub connecting the local and the metropolitan – and opening new possibilities for community life in the heart of Tel Aviv.