Research & Innovation Authority

רשות המחקר והחדשנות

مكتب الأبحاث والابتكار

Research & Innovation

Viewed through the critical lens of artists and designers, research at Bezalel is both humanistic and human-centered. It seeks to meet people where they are but also surprises, provokes, informs and inspires unconventional thinking.

Bezalel is spearheading the exploration and development of this promising field. With a fundamental openness to the unknown and the unexpected, it applies singular strategies to the investigation of a wide range of challenging problems encompassing the scientific, intellectual and social. This enables the Academy to produce innovative, useful and groundbreaking results while remaining both scholarly and imaginative.

Bezalel researchers partner with colleagues from all disciplines of inquiry using pioneering methods and tools, fueling activity that inquires, invents, frames, combines, involves and critiques in novel ways. The research and development is about, for or through art and design. It examines practical problems and theories as well as complex issues confronting humanity to provide greater insight and new approaches. It focuses on investigating significant aspects of life that influence both the individual and society, alongside the latest artistic techniques and disciplines.

Along with other areas, research at Bezalel aims to discover and adopt new materials, new technologies or new uses for them – it emphasizes new cultural ideas, from human rights or the Holocaust to issues related to social aspects of technology like human-robot interactions or new political opportunities enabled by digital diplomacy; it examines challenges presented by medical processes and accessibility as well as the global challenges of climate change. Research at Bezalel is deeply involved in the structure of smart cities and autonomous driving; it investigates and advances designed-based exploration of wide academic domains ranging from distance learning and mass communication to heritage preservation and disaster planning. Research at Bezalel is all encompassing, touching on all facets of our lives. 

Bezalel guides its researchers to develop theories that inform practice and employ practices that inform theory, while understanding that in art, design and architecture, a fundamental separation between the two does not necessarily exist; that its inherent outlook is entrepreneurial and future-oriented.

The Academy’s innate strength is its ability to constantly imagine and re-imagine a better world and quickly translate these thoughts and theories into useful and practical applications and enterprises. In an ever-shifting social, technological, material and political environment, Bezalel’s investment in art and design research helps reveal new knowledge; new knowledge that leads to novel and inventive understandings of the world.