Chaim Ash

Chaim Ash was born in Kishinev, Moldavia, and graduated from the architectural faculty in Voronez, Russia. He is co-founder and CTO of EZ2CAD Ltd. (). He lives in Natanya, Israel, with his wife Ina and two children – Chen and Adam.

"... 4. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto
heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the
whole earth.
5. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this
they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have
imagined to do.
7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand
one another's speech.
8. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they
left off to build the city..... "
“Genesis”, 11, 4-8

1. Rationale.
Since languages were confounded, a common language has been replaced by war. It is a war of an individual against an individual, a row of fighters against a row of fighters, a street against a street, city against city, people against people… War has different faces: war is an art, war is a phenomenon of culture, war is a part of consciousness... Mankind is proud of war - in this aspect the individual has been raised to God’s level: by a wave of his hand he can erase everything alive from Earth.
War is democratic: the strong is at war with the weak, the clever is at war with the silly, the father is at war with his son... War is a quintessence of the principle “equality and brotherhood”: it equally persecutes those who are alive and fraternizes those who are dead. War is paradoxical - more than once it emerged when people cried: “Stop the war!” War is like a plague: if somewhere on Earth its center exists, it can spark in any other place.
War is a symbol of unity. In its imagination Mankind sees its unification only against a symbolic external enemy on the basis of war: huge community of Homo sapiens against any other species. What except the war can unite Homo sapiens when the reason disappears when it comes to another Homo sapiens, another person of different belief, different color, different culture...?
To understand the other - requires a self change, but a self change equal death. It is easier to kill the other or to force him to be like you. The truth that all of us belong to the same species is forgotten as soon as differences between us become incompatible.
What will allow us to find a mutual language? May be the fact that Earth is our common home? Earth is too big an entity to be felt as a real home. A symbol of a common home, a visible sign that can be grasped with an eye is necessary. Could there be common symbols in our different religions? For example, a tower, “whose top may reach unto heaven”, which was under construction when peoples were united? Mutual language was lost when the construction of the tower stopped. If then, long ago, peoples had found a common language and had completed the tower, the world would have be better off.
To find this common language, to displace war from its base, a creation in the proportion of a miracle is required, a creation which will be erected by the efforts of all Mankind - the Tower.


2. Idea of a Tower.
The Tower, which is created by mutual mankind’s efforts so that nobody could assert: “It has been made by me!” And everyone would know that he made it together with the others. The Tower, which is created on a neutral territory so that nobody could say: “It stands on my land!” And everyone would feel that it is his place too.
The Tower, which is created from various particles of all terrestrial cultures and religions so that nobody could claim: “It is similar to me!”, but everyone would see his soul’s reflection in it.
The Tower is a place of attraction, where people gather from all over the world to see all the cultures of Earth at once. It’s a place where cultures are presented together in their natural, landscape environment.
A certain social section in a certain time is presented. It’s a place where an individual can enter any culture as its integral part.
A person, visiting the tower again, will find, that the tower has changed, that other time and social section of cultures are presented, landscapes have changed, people have changed... The Tower is a place of pilgrimage, a centre of all religions, a place where you are close to heaven. A number of visual signs that represent any and each people on Earth, any and each religion on Earth, will also include the Tower as one of the symbols of faith and nation, as a technical, scientific, cultural achievement of each people.
Various events typical to different cultures are organized in the Tower: concerts, mass prayers, dramatized processions, mass meditations, carnivals, sports events - anything, that will allow generating emotional connection between the Tower and the cultures presented in it.
The Tower is a place where Mankind, this huge conglomerate of various cultures, studies itself. For the external and internal communication and orientation each culture creates sign systems for itself: a language, slang, attributes, alphabet, hierarchy, a sound scale... The Sign system of a culture is the outcome of the analysis of the environment, in which the given culture exists. Mankind should not and can not develop itself on the basis of any selected culture. The basic value of Mankind is its multifaceness. It is necessary to preserve and study each culture in the context of all other cultures. A culture realizing its value and stability on a universal scale has no need to protect itself against expansion of other cultures.
The tower is a place where Mankind will bring up the future leaders who are born in one culture, but absorb values of all other cultures since early childhood.
The Tower is a place where interaction between cultures occurs. The idea that is created in one culture does not always have an adequate counterpart in other cultures. But the idea can be created simultaneously in several cultures and than it will be more acceptable by various representatives of different communities.
The tower is a place, where Mankind improves itself. In each culture there are the subcultures preaching violence and cruelty. But if such subcultures associate themselves with what is represented in the Tower then there is an opportunity to change its negative nature from within the Tower.
The Tower is a model of a world.

3. Model of a world.
Many times Mankind was captured by an epidemic of ideas whose hasty realization resulted in war and disaster!
"... People perish for metal... "? Faust’s friend was wrong. People perish for a word! Consciousness of a person operates not with objective reality, but with a description of this reality, that is not the same! Reality can be described in infinite ways; each description will be different, and each will be similar to an objective reality as a description of an elephant made by blinds that touch it is similar to the elephant itself.
Reality is impartial and exists in each concrete moment whereas its description includes the past and the future, has emotional coloring and is created in a concrete sign system of a concrete culture. And this description has a rather physical influence on a person: from a heart attack to “Christ’s wounds”.
We describe ourselves a reality to which we are directly connected. We inherit from various sources a description of reality that is not connected to us directly, and this description becomes part of our consciousness. The source that supplies this description, which is not necessarily correct and convincing, has to be described as reliable. The description made by the enemy is initially incorrect, without dependence on its essence.
Descriptions form a sign system when they are "canonized".
All the sign systems created or processed within the framework of one people, form a culture. In each certain interval of time and in each culture there is a dominant group of sign systems that supervises the transition of basic descriptions to a person. In addition, this dominant group provides a person with a description of the past, in which a people’s honor and dignity is preserved and a description of the future with the certain emotional coloring (as a rule, the bright future), with a possible obstacles for achieving this future, a description of the potential enemy and ways of his neutralization. Reliability of the source describing the future can be found out only with the help of a description of the past made by other reliable sources.
If a big number of people describe this dominant group as an unreliable source it can be replaced entirely or partially.
The change of the dominant group of the sign systems can be accompanied by cataclysms such as creation of a new religion, revolution, etc.
In spite of the fact that different cultures describe our future differently, there is only one common future for all of us. Despite the fact that when this future becomes the past, it is described differently.

4. A site of the project.
On Earth only the sea is exterritorial and belongs to all and no one. The Mediterranean is the only sea that creates civilizations in abundance on its coasts which in turn create wars that wash these civilizations back into the sea. Three basic monotheistic religions of the world were created on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea whose waters had been left earlier by different gods. The Mediterranean connects three continents like a ring. A ring which is torn in one place: the strait of Gibraltar.
Strait of Gibraltar! How many times in the history of Mankind did a war cross its coasts? One coast is Europe, another is Africa. They are different as different poles of Mankind: different poles of wealth, different poles of colors, different poles of belief...
Is there any other more pertinent point for a symbol of unity than the strait of Gibraltar? The project is supposed to be placed on an artificial island in the strait of Gibraltar. Bridges will connect the island to Europe and Africa. It will not only create the shortest overland way between Europe and Africa, but will also allow an active navigation in all the water area of the Mediterranean Sea. Each country can leave the animated card in such a lively place that will promote the blossom of tourism in the countries situated far from the Tower.

5. The description.
The project consists of three cylindrical towers of different diameters (45, 55 and 60 meters), connected by one common core. There are two basic types of levels in each cylindrical tower: park levels and technical levels. Park levels, of 20 meters height each, are intended for a reconstruction of a landscape, architecture, ecology and traditions, characteristic for cultures which are represented at the given park level. Technical levels, of 5 meters height each, are intended for bearing structures, technical communications, water tanks, multipurpose halls and the commercial areas. Staircases, lifts and pedestrian ramps connect all levels. The cable way with observation carriage is stipulated under pedestrian ramps. Multiple evacuation ways provides safety of a building in an extreme situation. General height of the building is 1400 meters; general area is about 500,000 square meters.

6. The Tower again.
A victory is not the end of a war: Massacre of St. Bartholomew is proceeds, the fascism is alive, the tribal feud has not disappeared, the crusade is not completed... It is possible to say with confidence that Punic Wars ended: both Carthago was destroyed, and Rome fell.
A war with the help of a word carries its damnation to our descendants till the seventh generation. If a word - the carrier of a war it is necessary to say other word and to say it from such a platform, from such a minaret, that it will be heard and comprehended by everybody.