Avraham Yaski (Hebrew: אברהם יסקי) is an Israeli architect.
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Avraham Yaski was born in Chişinău, Romania (now in Moldova) on 14 April 1927 and moved to the British Mandate of Palestine with his family in 1935. Yaski studied at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Early in his career he worked in the office of Arieh Sharon. At the age of 25 he made the plans for Rabin Square with Shimon Povsner,[1] and later the Tel Aviv City Hall on the square. Early works by Yaski, such as the "quarter-kilometer apartments" of 1960 with Amnon Alexandroni, were primarily of concrete.[2]
In 1965, Avraham Yaski founded the architectural firm now known as Moore Yaski Sivan Architects.[3] From 1987 to 1991 he was an assistant professor at the Technion.[4] In 1994, he established the school of architecture at Tel Aviv University[5] where he was the head of the department until 1998. As of 2006, Moore Yaski Sivan Architects is the largest architecture firm in Israel with 73 employees.[6] With this firm, Yaski contributed significantly to the urban development of Tel Aviv.[7] Projects such as the Azrieli Center created a chapter in the city's architectural history that highlighted the skyscraper and skyline.[8] Later work by Yaski shifted somewhat from the use of concrete, in the era of brutalist architecture, to a brilliant architecture emphasising glass, "[a]nd yet, he unhesitatingly points to the "gray years" of building the country with exposed concrete - of which he made such widespread and amazing use - as the best period of his life and in the life of Israeli architecture." [1]
In 1982, he was awarded the Israel Prize, in architecture.[9]