Danna Azrieli’s company launches luxury building
02/21/2013 04:46
Daughter of real-estate mogul David Azrieli launches luxury apartment project in Herzliya Pituah with her company Candan.
DANNA AZRIELI says construction on the NIS 400m. project in Herzliya Pituah will be done in 2015 Photo: Niv Elis
Danna Azrieli, vice chairman of the Azrieli Group and daughter of real-estate
mogul David Azrieli, on Wednesday officially launched her private company
Candan’s first project, a luxury apartment building in Herzliya
Pituah.
Construction on the NIS 400 million project, called Gal Yam
(meaning sea wave), will be completed in April 2015. Just under a quarter of the
building’s 35 units have already been sold, and the project already made
headlines when one of its penthouses sold for NIS 19.5m.
Azrieli, a
bubbly woman whose Canadian upbringing and liberal-arts environmental education
shine through her every word, is visibly excited by the project.
“The
Azrieli group is focused on offices and malls,” she said. “I needed a creative
outlet.”
Azrieli purchased the 5,000-square-meter plot of land on Ramat
Yam St., where the Eshel Hotel stood, for about NIS 44m. in 2006, when she was
nine months pregnant, and in every way, this project is her baby.
Indeed,
she seems to have taken part in every aspect of the project’s
planning.
As one might guess from the building’s name, its curvaceous
design was inspired by sea waves. Azrieli wanted the building to reflect it
location – only 300 meters from the sea, a rarity for residential land in
Israel.
She recalled a story that the famous Sydney Opera House was
designed to resemble a split orange peel (“not that I’m comparing this with the
Syndey Opera House”). Its lit-up silhouette is inspired by the white foam of the
nearby waves, and its two buildings are split, like the red sea, at the
entrance.
“The materials are all really important to me,” she
said.
“I sniff them, I touch them.”
A former student of
environmental sciences, she said she picks up litter at the construction site,
which the construction crew says is maintained at an unusually clean
level.
Not content to let her baby go when it’s all grown up, Azrieli
plans on staying on in charge of the management company.
“Who am I
building for? I’m the model resident!” she said. And, of course, she purchased
one of the penthouses herself.