By 
When people hear the name Oberson in Israel, many think of fashion. For decades, Gideon Oberson and his family helped shape Israeli couture, dressing generations of women and building one of the country’s most recognizable design brands. His daughter, Dana Oberson, inherited the creative gene but chose a different medium.
Instead of fabrics, she works with stone. Instead of runways, she designs homes, hotels and public spaces that draw inspiration from Israel’s landscapes, history and layered identities.
With the publication of her new monograph, House of Oberson: A Design Legacy, published by Rizzoli, Israeli architect Dana Oberson invites readers into a world where architecture is about more than buildings.
“Israel has beautiful sites,” Oberson said during a recent Zoom interview. “I wanted to share them with the world at the highest level possible.”
Design has been part of Oberson’s life from the beginning. After serving in the Israel Defense Forces, she studied graphic design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. There, she discovered architecture’s unique ability to operate across multiple dimensions and scales.
“What fascinated me was the possibility of more than one dimension and the change of scale,” she said. “One day you can be designing a chair, and the next you can be working on an entire building.”
One project featured prominently in the book is a contemporary stone villa in the hills of Neve Ilan, in the heart of the Judean Hills. Built on a sloping site overlooking forested hills and distant views toward the Mediterranean, the home uses locally sourced Jerusalem stone to create a dialogue between past and present.
“I dislike trends,” she said. “Every home should be different.” As one of Israel’s leading architects, Oberson has navigated a profession traditionally dominated by men. “I’m blonde, but stupid I am not,” she recalled telling one boardroom full of skeptical colleagues — a remark that quickly commanded attention.
“Design has no borders,” she said. “It is always crossing.”
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