Over the years the Temple Architecture Department has offered architectural design studios that have focused on work that address international sites and a variety of cultural and social setting. In addition to the studios that take place on the Rome and Tokyo Temple University campuses, these studios focus on specific sites and issues that arise from particular interests and international connections of faculty members.

This semester one section of the fourth year architectural design studio is working on Hezekiah’s Pool in the Old City of Jerusalem. The pool today is completely inaccessible to the public and sits as an open trash dump within one hundred meters of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and four hundred meters of the Dome of the Rock.

The pool has existed since the seventh century BCE and taken on many functions during its long existence. Its creation is credited to the Judah king Hezekiah who ruled from 715 to 687 BCE.

The studio has been developed to document the existing conditions of the pool and its surroundings and to propose an architectural intervention that will give access to the public and to reintroduce the pool as a civic green space in the heart of the Old City.

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