Biography
Yaakov Rechter was born on 14 June 1924 in Tel Aviv, in Mandatory Palestine. His parents were Paula Singer and the architect Ze'ev Rechter who arrived to Israel onboard the Ruslan along with other cultural pioneers such as painter Yitzhak Frenkel and historian Joseph Klausner. He grew up in his father's house, which was used as a culture center in Tel Aviv.
Rechter enlisted during World War II in the British Army's Royal Air Force. He was a guard stationed at the Stella Maris Base on Mount Carmel at night. He studied architecture during the day at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, Palestine, graduating in 1947.
In 1952 he joined his father's office of architects. Rechter was married twice, to elementary school teacher Sara Shafir, then to actress Hana Maron in 1957. He was the father of five children: musician and composer Yoni Rechter, philosopher Ophra Rechter, illustrator Michal Loit, actress and singer Dafna Rechter, and architect Amnon Rechter, with whom he worked, forming Rechter Architects.
He designed the Mivtachim Sanitarium in Zikhron Ya'akov, a brutalist architectural work that was dubbed a "masterpiece" by ArchDaily. Rechter sought to float the rooms in a serpentine manner alongside the hill's crown. The sanitarium was commissioned by the Histadrut, Israel's major labour organization. According to ArchDaily, Rechter's architecture sought to incorporate socialist ideals. After the sanitarium was shut down in the early 2000s it was renovated by Yaakov's son, Amnon Rechter, in 2010 and converted into a hotel.
Rechter is considered by ArchDaily as belonging to the 'second generation' of Israeli architecture. In contrast to the sleek white stucco of the international style of his father and his fellow architects, in his early career Yaakov Rechter designed with a brutalist pallet, exposing the raw concrete surface of his projects. He used concrete heavily, not only because it was cheap at the time but also because in his opinion "[it] is certainly not local, but it's authentic in every sense."
