At first glance, the Orot Cinema building in Beersheba (the largest city in southern Israel, in the Negev Desert) doesn’t look like an architectural treasure. It is an abandoned, dilapidated structure, and visitors have to clear a path through thorns and rubbish just to get to it, only to find that the entrance is blocked. For the most part, a glimpse inside reveals a building in ruins, filled with even more trash. But architects Omri Oz-Amar and Hadas Shadar see beyond that. They contend that the Orot Cinema represents a rare Israeli architectural legacy that should be fostered and preserved. To that end, they formed the Association to Promote the Brutalist Architectural Legacy in Israel. Last January, the association submitted an official request to UNESCO, asking that it recognize Beersheba as a World Heritage Site, representing the Brutalist architectural movement.

Brutalism first emerged after World War II. It reached Israel in the late 1950s. The guiding principle is the prominent use of exposed concrete. The underlying intention was to create efficient, exposed buildings featuring clean straight lines.

“Brutalism is an ethic,” Oz-Amar told Al-Monitor, “and this ethic refers to the building’s exposure. Something about the building’s purpose or functioning was prominently exposed. In Israel, this was expressed through the different ways movement flows through the building.”

This can be seen during a Brutalist architectural tour of Beersheba. The Brutalist approach to motion is seen in even a quick perusal of buildings on the campus of the local Ben Gurion University. Impressive architectural maneuvers make it easy to discern from the outside where there are stairwells or corridors in the buildings, even if they are not exterior. Standing in the outer courtyards, it is actually possible to follow the buildings’ lines to see where students sit in the lecture halls and where the lecturer stands.