Inauguration of the Matanel Garden
Oct 17, 2021
The official opening of the Matanel Garden in the Naftali Building at Tel Aviv University took place today. For many years, the Matanel Foundation has been a trusted partner of TAU, supporting many initiatives toward Tikkun Olam.
The Matanel Garden project addresses ecological concerns related to natural resource exploitation while acting as a humanitarian effort to integrate people into this environment. In the garden, a laboratory for social and biological experiments, research, planning, and innovative thinking promotes collaborations among researchers and activists.
The garden would also serve as a forum for all participants and a platform for exchanging information between investors and users – knowing what might work and what might not work is crucial to both technological and legislative development. This garden is planned to be open to students from the surrounding high schools and weekly appearances of faculty members from the faculty of arts and music. In this project, we are attempting to create an environment that is constantly alive, constantly working, constantly exploding with creative ideas.
By implementing this project, we are re-inventing the Naftali Building, which houses the Department of Social Sciences, to become a fully green building. Researchers and developers will be focusing on a range of issues related to water, renewable energy, urban ecology, and public policy as they strive to create holistic ecosystems and approaches to addressing global challenges in the field of sustainability.
Many highly respected figures attended the opening ceremony of the Matanel Garden, including; Prof. Ariel Porat, President of Tel-Aviv University, Ms. Joelle Aflalo, Chairwoman of the Matanel Foundation, Prof. Itai Sened, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Head of the Boris Mints Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions to Global Challenges and Prof. Hadas Mamane, Head of the Environmental Engineering program gave their addresses regarding the event and the way the inauguration settles up with the futuristic vision of the Naftaly building, turning it into a dynamic and sustainable educational environment and research lab. It is essential to see that projects like these advance a major strategic priority of the university, creating conditions for interdisciplinary research.