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In 1986, Karmi-Melamede and her brother, Ram, won the international competition to design the Supreme Court in Jerusalem.
By Shula Rosen
Ada Karmi-Melamede, one of Israel’s most influential architects, has spent a lifetime shaping landmarks and teaching generations of students while navigating a profession long dominated by men.
A new documentary by her daughter, filmmaker Yael Melamede, revisits her career and highlights her impact on Israel’s architectural landscape.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1936 to a family of renowned architects, Karmi-Melamede trained at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.”
She recalls that, out of 90 students, only nine were women.
She later taught at Columbia University, where former students remember her guidance with admiration. However, the rejection of her tenure bid in the 1980s led her to leave the school, a move that redirected her career back to Israel..
That turn proved decisive. In 1986, Karmi-Melamede and her brother, Ram, won the international competition to design the Supreme Court in Jerusalem.
The project, which she calls “the most important building I was lucky enough to work on,” became her signature work, blending modernist rigor with traditions rooted in both East and West.
She notes that working in Israel allows closer engagement with contractors and communities than is often possible in the United States.
The documentary, Ada: My Mother the Architect, premiered this spring in New York and Los Angeles. Shot over several years, it follows her through archives, classrooms, and building sites, capturing her reflections on architecture as a calling.
“I wasn’t making a film to celebrate my mother,” her daughter Yael told Tablet. “I wanted to discover things about her I didn’t know, and about people for whom their work is their world.”
Karmi-Melamede’s sense of architecture as inseparable from land and community is central to the film. She often describes buildings as needing roots, a perspective shaped by her generation’s role in building Israel itself.
Now in her late 80s, Karmi-Melamede continues to practice. Yet she admits that after Oct. 7, optimism is harder to sustain. Still, she insists, “Architecture is a hopeful art form. You need to remain positive if you’re going to bring projects to fruition.”
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