Designed for Jerusalem Design Week 2026, this distorted timber installation transforms the courtyard into a fractured basketball court: an unpredictable, artificial landscape aiming to question how we navigate anew when our physical and social foundations dissolve.
PIT is a temporary public installation by HQ Architects for the Jerusalem Design Week 2026, situated in the courtyard of Hansen House, a historic leprosy hospital established in 1887, now turned into a cultural hub for design, media, and technology. Responding to this year’s curatorial theme, Match Point, HQA’s PIT,approaches the sports field as a spatial and social construct. Usually defined by shared rules, boundaries, and a sense of equality, a sports field relies on a basic assumption: that the ground beneath it remains stable. PIT challenges this illusion of stability, revealing an invisible infrastructure that goes unnoticed until it fails to support. The installation exposes an uncomfortable reality: the ground we stood on and the rules we relied on are gone. As our physical and social foundations dissolve, a predictable territory turns into an unpredictable space where we must learn to navigate anew. The courtyard is transformed into the fractured remains of a basketball court.
Constructed from nine angular OSB boards ranging from 17 cm to 1.5 meters in height, the temporary timber structure forms an artificial topography that radically alters movement. Clad in matte blue and green PVC with skewed white court lines, the shifting planes distort the physical space, creating an unpredictable landscape of inclines, depressions, and informal seating. A digital scoreboard acts as a live arena screen, broadcasting real-time international news headlines that continually alter the "matchup" data between a symbolic 'Home' and 'Away' team. PIT sinks visitors into a collective sense of disorientation. This physical descent reflects a collective sense of disorientation, occurring as established systems and familiar territories no longer provide the stability and direction they once offered. Within this reality defined by uncertainty, we are left with a fundamental question:
How do we move forward within a reality defined by uncertainty?
