According to UNESCO estimates, Tel Aviv has more than 4,000 modernist buildings from the early 1930s to 1950s: it is one of the largest massifs of architecture of this time in the world. About half of these structures are included as the "White City in Tel Aviv - Architecture of the Modern Movement" in the World Heritage List. At the same time, UNESCO researchers divided the city into three sectors: Center (A), Rothschild Boulevard (B) and the area of Bialik Street (C_).
In addition to the name "White City", Tel Aviv modernism is also traditionally described by the term "Bauhaus", which implies close ties of this architecture with the principles taught at the Bauhaus school. However, both of these names are not very correct, and they began to be actively used only in the mid-1980s. Despite the fact that there are not so many buildings in the city that correspond to the ideas of the Bauhaus, Google gives more images from Tel Aviv for the corresponding request than from Dessau or from anywhere else. A Bauhaz graduate Arie Sharon, one of the most "Tel Aviv" architects, pointed out that the Bauhaus is not a style, and that is why the use of this "label" is erroneous. But this definition stuck, it was picked up by the New York Times, property owners, the municipality.
With the name "White City" - an even more complicated story. Sharon Rothbard in his recently translated into Russian
The book "White City, Black City" quotes the words of Jean Nouvel, his teacher, who came to Tel Aviv in November 1995. “I was told this city is white. Do you see white? I am not,”said Nouvel, looking at the panorama of Tel Aviv from the rooftop. As a result, the French architect proposed incorporating shades of white into local SNiPs to truly "turn the city into a symphony in white."
Tel Aviv is not white. Its low-rise buildings give little shade, there is nowhere to hide from the sun, it literally presses and blinds - and so the color disappears, and the city seems white. Rothbard claims to support the myth of whiteness for political purposes: the city's emphasized Europeanization, its inclusion among the world's leading capitals - the list goes on. More details about Sharon Rothbard's point of view can be found in his book.
How it all began
Tel Aviv is a very young city for the ancient land of Israel. By the beginning of the 20th century, Palestine had been part of the Ottoman Empire for almost 400 years, so in the First World War it turned out to be the territory of the enemy of the Entente and, as such, was attacked by the British army. The British invaded Palestine from the south and, defeating the Turks, occupied the country: by the end of October 1917 they had taken Beersheba, Gaza and Jaffa, and on December 11, 1917, General Allenby's troops entered Jerusalem. In the Middle East, the British regime was established under the mandate of the League of Nations. It lasted from 1922 until May 15, 1948.
After 1945 Great Britain became involved in the aggravated Arab-Jewish conflict. In 1947, the British government announced its desire to abandon the Palestine Mandate, arguing that it was unable to find an acceptable solution for Arabs and Jews. The United Nations, created shortly before that, at the Second Session of its General Assembly on November 29, 1947, adopted Resolution No. 181 on the plan for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state, with the granting of a special status to the Jerusalem area. A few hours before the end of the mandate, on the basis of the Plan for the Partition of Palestine, the State of Israel was proclaimed, and this happened on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv.
But before this historic moment, Tel Aviv had managed to emerge and become a prominent city in the Middle East - and in just a few decades. In 1909, sixty Jewish families gathered to the northeast of the ancient, at that time - predominantly Arab-Turkish port of Jaffa (Jaffa) and divided the land they had acquired by lot. These settlers worked in Jaffa itself, and next to it they wanted to create a cozy residential suburb for life - Akhuzat Bayt. There they erected eclectic mansions and other structures that can still be seen in part in the Carmel market area. It is important to note that earlier Jewish quarters appeared around Jaffa: Neve Tzedek - in 1887, Neve Shalom - in 1890. There were about ten such quarters by the date of Akhuzait-Bayt's creation. But it was the founders of Akhuzat Bayt who wanted to organize for themselves a new space, a different environment from Jaffa, whose task was to create Hebrew culture. The key building there was the Herzliya gymnasium, the first public building in the new city. This is the point from which the entire city begins to turn towards the sea, so many buildings and streets follow a triangular plan. In the 1950s, the city changed a lot, the center was shifted to the north, and the area was in decline. The gymnasium was demolished, and its new building was erected on Jabotinsky Street, closer to the Yarkon River. The first Israeli skyscraper "Shalom Meir" appeared in its old place.
But let's return to the dawn of the 20th century, when the history of Tel Aviv began. Its name was taken from the Zionist leader and publicist Nachum Sokolov: in 1903 he translated from German into Hebrew the utopian novel of the founder of the World Zionist Organization Theodor Herzl "Altnoiland" ("Old New Land") called "Tel Aviv" ("Hill of Spring / Rebirth "), Referring to the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (3:15):" And I came to the displaced people in Tel Aviv, who live by the river Chebar, and stopped where they lived, and spent seven days among them in amazement."
So Tel Aviv took its most important place in history: the first Jewish city in the modern world, the first Zionist urban settlement in Palestine.
Geddes plan
Tel Aviv quickly grew from a suburb into an independent city, and it had its first mayor - Meir Dizengoff, who cherished the hope of turning the city entrusted to him into a metropolis. In 1919, he met with the Scottish sociologist and urban planner Patrick Geddes and discussed with him a plan for the development of a city for 40 thousand people. However, Dizengoff's plans were even more ambitious: he hoped that Tel Aviv would grow to 100 thousand inhabitants.
Geddes was tasked with developing a master plan for Tel Aviv, which he based on the “garden city” concept so popular at the beginning of the 20th century. The territory of the nascent city was divided into many sections of single-family houses. Geddes has planned 60 public gardens (half of which have been completed), and landscaping is also scattered along the streets and boulevards. The main recreational area is a beach promenade in the length of the entire city stretched along the sea. Geddes designed the city as a complex of interacting components structured into hierarchical systems. He compared the growth of a city to systems for moving water in leaves. With the growth of the city, its tissue should not be torn: for this it is necessary to introduce the poles of attraction there, around which the streets will develop - like blood vessels in the human body. For example, beautiful boulevards will attract strolling people, and on the shopping streets crossing them, flitting townspeople will turn into buyers.
Patrick Geddes' plan was approved in 1926, and in 1927 it was ratified by the Central Committee for Urban Planning for Palestine.
International style
In the early 1930s, architects from Europe arrived in Tel Aviv: Bauhaus graduate Arieh Sharon, former employee of Erich Mendelssohn Joseph Neufeld, student of Le Corbusier Ze'ev Rechter, follower of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Richard Kaufmann and others. Many of them unite and work out the principles of the Krug association and agree to jointly promote avant-garde architecture in the city under construction, as opposed to eclecticism. Later, other architects joined the group, many of whom emigrated from Germany due to the rise to power of the Nazis. The members of the "Circle" gathered every evening after work in a cafe and discussed urban problems, architecture, specific plans to promote their ideas.
The architects of "Circle" were not satisfied with the approved urban planning of Geddes, they called it traditionalist and outdated. It prevented them from realizing their ideas, so they wanted to arrange an "architectural revolt" - to overcome the official master plan and build only according to the principles of the modern movement. They were especially dissatisfied with two points: the principle of dividing the city's territory into sections and the alignment of houses along the red line along the streets.
In 1929, Jacob Ben-Sira (Jacob Ben Sira, Yaacov Shiffman) was appointed to the post of city engineer. He was the initiator and executor of many large projects that later formed modern Tel Aviv, and therefore he is called the "creator" of the White City. Ben Sira reworked the general plan of Geddes, as it was believed that it was interfering with the city's development, expanded the city to the north and united areas in the south and east that were not included in the Geddes plan. He consistently defended and implemented an international style in Tel Aviv.
Alexander Klein, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineers, in his master plan for Haifa also based on organic associations: the city should resemble a network of vessels of a tree leaf. When leaving the house, a person should see the green spaces necessary for "mental hygiene", which are crossed by streets every 600-700 meters. Klein considered the boulevards non-functional and meaningless: children don't play there, and adults don't walk there. However, the boulevards of Tel Aviv proved the opposite: both Rothschild Boulevard and Ben Ziona are actively used by citizens and businesses.
"Krug" actively promoted its ideas. The influential French magazine Architecture aujourd'hui dedicated a special issue to the new Palestinian architecture for the 1937 Paris World's Fair; Architectural critic and historian Julius Posener, who became their “voice”, wrote about the ideas and projects of the Circle members. As a result, the idea of the need to build up Tel Aviv with modern, progressive architecture finds support in society, and its influence is so strong that even the neighbors - the Arab bourgeoisie - are building villas in an international style.
Until the 1930s and the modernist "architectural attack" that began then, according to Geddes, Tel Aviv was "a mishmash, a struggle of different tastes," that is, the embodiment of eclecticism. Joseph Neufeld proposed to build the whole city in one - "organic" - way. However, this term should not be taken literally. Harmony is very important for Jewish architects, as it refers to perfection - the human body: there is no greater rationality than in the wonders of creation, and the most rational rationalism is organic. Researcher Catherine Weill-Rochant suggests that Israeli architects used the word "organic" instead of "rational", not referring to organic architecture itself (say, F. L. Wright's ideas). For them, modernist architecture is organic, divinely ideal. The functionality of architecture, the absence of frills is very organic, this is how a person is created. This term has been used all over the place.
For the most part, commercial housing was built. The first social homes appear closer to the 1950s. Bauhaus graduate Arie Sharon designed the first cooperative housing for workers: he convinced the owners of several sites to unite and build cooperative houses instead of private ones. There were also supposed to be social establishments: a canteen, a laundry, a kindergarten. Sharon's project is inspired by the Bauhaus building in Dessau.
Architects, using the developments of the Bauhaus, meanwhile, did not go far in their experiments. They had a traditional attitude to space: a clear separation of private and public. First of all, this is noticeable on the streets. Despite the fact that buildings recede from the red line, fences or greenery support this line. The front and courtyard spaces are also interpreted as usual: the street facade is worked out to the details, and the rear one can often differ in decoration and elaboration for the worse, it is strictly utilitarian. The city still consists of streets, squares, boulevards, dead ends: no modernist innovations in planning, the syntax of the urban space remains classic. On a human scale, most houses are no more than three stories high, just as Geddes intended. This architecture does not overwhelm a person.
Analysis of the periodicals of that time shows that modern architecture was not a rational result of the general plan, but rather was built contrary to urban planners and traditional norms. The existing ensemble of modernist buildings is the result of an intense struggle between the forces that shaped the city: the city authorities, urban planners and architects.
An important point: then the British ruled Palestine, so they made all the decisions. However, the Tel Aviv authorities were able to ensure that major decisions (at the level of the general plan) were approved by British officials, and decisions at the level of districts, streets, buildings were taken without their participation. This made it possible for avant-garde architects to embody their ideas.
UNESCO
Over the next 40 years, the international style of Tel Aviv was "overgrown with everyday life": the balconies were glazed, the columns supporting the houses at the level of the first floors were covered with brick walls, the light color of the facades darkened with time, etc. The White City was dilapidated; however, in 1984 the historian and architect Michael Levin organized an exhibition dedicated to him in Tel Aviv. The question of preserving and reconstructing the "Bauhaus heritage" was raised. In 1994, the architect Nitza Metzger-Szmuk, the chief architect-restorer at the municipality, took up the idea of the White City. She identified the buildings of the 1930s in order to compile a list of buildings to be preserved, mapped out a restoration plan for Tel Aviv, where she marked the perimeter of the White City, and in the summer of 1994 organized the Bauhaus in Tel Aviv festival, which brought together prominent architects from different countries, and throughout the city were held architectural, art and design exhibitions. Smuk drew up and submitted an application for the inclusion of the White City in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which happened in 2003.
The first reaction came from property owners: prices per square meter in houses in the "Bauhaus style" skyrocketed. The slogans appeared in advertising brochures: “luxury apartments in the Bauhaus style”. The New York Times called the White City "the largest open-air museum of the Bauhaus." Tel Aviv is beginning to perceive these buildings as a valuable heritage and as a means of attracting investment. Since then, there have been numerous studies and publications, restoration projects. And the posters, hung around the city, read: "Residents of Tel Aviv walk with their heads up … And now the whole world knows why!"
Zina Dizengoff Square
Architect Genia Averbuch, 1934
The square is named after the wife of the first mayor of Tel Aviv, Zina Dizengoff. Its layout, laid down in the plan of Geddes - a circle with a fountain in the center, serving as the intersection of three streets - Dizengoff, Rainer and Pinsker, cars were started up along its perimeter, while the parking planned under it was not realized. The square is surrounded by facades in a uniform, international style.
In 1978, the square was reconstructed by the architect Tsvi Lissar in order to solve problems with traffic congestion: its surface was raised, allowing traffic flows under the square. And pedestrians climb there from the adjacent streets by stairs and ramps.
In 1986, the Yaacov Agam kinetic fountain was installed on the square, consisting of several huge moving gears. Parts of the sculpture were set in motion by streams of water moving to the music. The fountain itself was illuminated with colored spotlights, and flames burst from its core to the rhythm of music from gas burners. Such a show was staged several times a day.
In the 21st century, the question of returning the square to its original appearance was raised, since the previously popular place for recreation and walks of the townspeople after the reconstruction in 1978 became only a transit space. The restoration of the square was started at the end of 2016.
Reisfeld House
Ha-Yarkon Street, 96
Architect Pinchas Bijonsky, 1935
Reconstruction by Amnon Bar Or Architects and Bar Orian Architects, 2009
One of the few houses in Tel Aviv with a courtyard: it has three wings, two of which face Ha-Yarkon Street and form this courtyard. The wings have a rounded shape, which was a typical solution for many Tel Aviv buildings in the 1930s. In 2009, the building was renovated, and four office floors were added over the main volume.
House of Polishchuk ("House-Slone ")
Magen David Square, corner of Allenby and Nahalat Binyamin streets
Architects Shlomo Liaskowsky, Jacov Orenstein, 1934
Due to its location on Magen David Square, where four streets intersect, Polishchuk's house serves as a city landmark. The V-shaped outline of the building and its striped eaves accentuate the center of the building. Together with the reinforced concrete pergola on the roof, they form a single compositional solution, the rhythm of which accentuates the corner from the side of the square. The shape of the house reflects the influence of similar "corner" buildings by Erich Mendelssohn. It also echoes Beit Adar, Tel Aviv's first office center.
House of Havoinika
Montefiori street, 1
Architect Isaac Schwarz, 1920s
Authors of the reconstruction - Amnon Bar Or Architects, 2011
The first architect of the house was Yehuda Magidovitch, and Isaac Schwartz created the final design.
The historic three-storey building, an acute-angled triangle in plan, was located opposite the rear facade of the Herzliya gymnasium. By the early 1990s, the house had almost completely collapsed, dividing the fate of the entire district, and in the process received new powerful reinforced concrete “neighbors”. But the building was reconstructed, becoming a symbol of the ambiguity of the law on the preservation and modern embodiment of the image of the White City.
In the new project, three more floors with tape windows have been added, stair junctions have been moved, a volume for an elevator shaft has been added, and the main facade has been straightened along the contour of the site. All this created a discrepancy between the new and old parts of the Havoinika house. To solve the problem, a couple of false balconies were placed on the facade at the level of the fourth floor.
The building does not occupy the entire corner of the plot between Montefiori and Ha-Shahar streets, and the free space accommodates a green garden, which is very important in this dense urban environment. The turning angle of the house, which gave this opportunity, is the result of changing the direction of the street towards the sea according to Geddes' plan.
House of Shimon Levi ("House-Ship")
Levanda street, 56
1934–35
The building with a triangular plan connects three streets: Levanda, Ha-Masger and Ha-Rakevet. It was built on the Givat Marko hill above the Ayalon River valley in the northeastern corner of the Neve Shaanan area: this place is quite far from the center of Tel Aviv, where the buildings of the White City are mainly concentrated.
The corner facade emphasizes the U-turn of Ha-Rakevet, along which the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway passed, towards the sea. Initially, the project consisted of three floors, but in the course of construction, the height increased to six. This made it possible to use the roof of the building as an observation post for the units of the Haganah; the number of storeys and the location of the site made it possible to control a significant area around. The outline of the building is very narrow and relatively long. The verticality is also emphasized by the allocation of the volume of the staircase from the outside. The narrowed volume of the upper floor emphasizes the height of the house and, together with the dynamic arrangement of the balconies, creates the image of a fast-moving ship.
House Shalem
Rosh Pina street, 28
1933–1936
Marko Hill, where the house stands, is fortified with terraces with retaining walls, which creates a spectacular relief, where, in addition to the Shalem house, there are two more buildings in the international style: "Beit Sarno" and "Beit Kalmaro".
The composition of the house with a rounded retaining wall under the end facade, together with the allocated volumes of balconies, echoes the neighboring Beit Haonia house.
Historically, this part of the Neve Shaanan area is a concentration of "folds" of physical and social space. Marko Hill was bought from the Arabs in the village of Abul Jiban, outside Tel Aviv's municipal border, and was not covered by the Geddes plan. Next to the hill was a railway bridge, over which trains went from Jaffa north to Tel Aviv, and then returned south and turned towards Jerusalem. Below was the Ayalon Valley with a river filled with water from the hills of Samaria in winter. This place still retains its borderline character, although today it is embodied in a much less poetic form.
Text: Denis Esakov, Mikhail Bogomolny.
Photos: Denis Esako
