On sweltering summer days there are few places more inviting than a cooling patch of shade. But in some sunbaked urban environments, it can be frustratingly difficult to find an escape. Hoping to encourage the creation of more, and better, urban shading structures, the Design Museum Holon is hosting “Urban Shade in Israel,” an exhibition focused on the country’s struggle with heat, which offers proposals for international application.

“There is not sufficient awareness with public servants, mayors, city planners, architects, and landscape architects of the need for protection from the sun in the hot summer months,” says Martin Weyl, one of the curators. “As a result, school yards, playgrounds, sport areas, promenades, sites of public gatherings…and especially parks are inaccessible in the middle of the day because of the burning heat.”

In hopes of improving the situation, the museum hosted an international competition for shade structures among emerging architects and designers, and generated five full-scale prototypes. A team led by the New York architecture firm MODU created Cloud Seeding, an overhead structural mesh holding 20,000 plastic balls that create shifting shade patterns with the wind. Antwerp’s Unfold design studio led a team that devised Net Work Lab, a suspended shading system made from woven Tyvek and tarpaulin that can be easily constructed by community residents. Athens-based Point Supreme Architects led a team that conceived Serpentina, a simple pavilion topped by colorful industrial-grade acrylic textiles.

The exhibition, which also includes a wide range of shade-related presentations inside the museum’s Ron Arad–designed building, runs through October 31.

Design Museum Holon, Pinhas Eilon St. 8, Holon, Israel; www.dmrg.il

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