Avner Yashar

Avner Yashar was born in 1956 in Tel Aviv

Avner Yashar was born in Tel Aviv on 13 June 1956. His mother, Rema Samsonov, was an opera singer and teacher. His father, Yitzhak Yashar, was an architect who designed the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Dizengoff Center.

In the late 1970s he studied psychology and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. In 1980 he moved to architecture at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, and he finished his studies at the Technion in Haifa in 1986. While still a student he worked in his father's office.

Since 1997 he has led Yashar Architects. His office planned the Tzamarot Ayalon neighborhood in Tel Aviv and towers such as Rothschild 1 and the Diamond Exchange District Towers in Ramat Gan. In 2017 he founded the joint firm AradYashar with designer Ron Arad, and their ToHa building won 2 CTBUH awards in 2021.

Yashar supports dense urban building with towers and mixed-use projects. In 2014 he taught at Tel Aviv University and published a study on linking the eastern and western parts of Tel Aviv. In 2013, after his father's death, he started the Yitzhak Yashar Prize for architecture graduates.

He married Michal Bahir in 1983, and they divorced in 1998. In 2010 he married actress and director Ronit Elkabetz, who died in 2016. In 2020 he married architect Adi Iny, and they live in Tel Aviv.