Sundowner: Autumn/Winter 2019

TEL AVIV
HAUS PROUD
In 2019, Bauhaus is celebrating its centenary. It’s been 100 years
since architect Walter Gropius founded the famed German school
of design. Characterised by its form-follows-function and less-ismore
principles, the Bauhaus taught both arts and crafts (or fine
and applied arts) in an effort to bridge the gap between the two.
Deemed un-German and cited for its “cultural bolshevism” by
the Nazis, the school – which had been based at Weimar until
1925, Dessau through 1932, and Berlin for its final months – was
closed for good in 1933. While architecture wasn’t on the agenda
until 1925, when Gropius began to instruct pupils in the subject,
thanks to the school’s association with some of the age’s finest
architects – Mies van der Rohe was the director of the institute by
its end – one of its greatest legacies can today be seen in the built
environment of Germany and beyond.
After its closure, the emigré pupils and staff – the Bauhausler
– hastened the spread of Bauhaus’s principles to some far-flung
cities in unexpected places. While some went west – László
Moholy-Hagy and van der Rohe to Chicago and Gropius to
Massachusetts – the best Bauhaus city is in the Middle East.
BRIGHT LINES, WHITE CITY
Seaside, cosmopolitan Tel Aviv may only be 110 years old, but
in terms of architectural significance, it’s incomparable in the
region – this is where the Bauhaus movement made its most
lasting impression. At the heart of Tel Aviv lies the White City, a
collection of some 4,000 buildings built by the Bauhaus diaspora.
These included German-Jewish architects Arieh Sharon, Munio
Giati Weinraub, Shmeul Mestechkin, and Shlomo Bernstein, who
had studied at Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin, and who brought this
new International Style with them when they emigrated to what
was then the British Mandate of Palestine.
SPACE TO BUILD, A NEW BUILT SPACE
A new city is a veritable playground for architects, planners, and
builders, presenting a blank canvas on which to work. In 1906,
60 Jewish families met in Jaffa – one of the oldest ports in the
world – with plans to establish a city nearby. Tel Aviv’s founders
purchased 12.8 hectares of sand dunes, and by 1909 had divvied
it up and allocated plots by lottery, using the model of the English
garden city. By 1925, the population of Tel Aviv (Hill of Spring)
had grown to around 34,000, due in part to riots in Jaffa that
encouraged resettlement.
The population boom resulted in an ever-increasing need
for housing and civic buildings. Scottish urban planner Patrick
Geddes, who had worked on the design for New Delhi, was
commissioned by Tel Aviv’s founding father and first mayor,
Meir Dizengoff, to come up with a structure for this new garden
city. Geddes started working on his plan in 1925 and the 62-page
document was accepted in 1929. It included two major roads
running parallel to the shore, plus three lesser north-south
thoroughfares to channel traffic. These were complemented by
an east-west secondary road to ventilate the city and carry the
cooling breeze from the sea to residents. Around this footprint,
buildings in the International Style began to rise. Marked by
ribbon-like windows, geometric balconies, and crafted in white,
crisp (and cheap) concrete, the White City’s buildings were
constructed according to the clean lines, modernist aesthetic,
and socialist ideals of the Bauhaus.
OUTSTANDING SIGNIFICANCE
Fast forward to 2003: UNESCO granted Tel Aviv’s White City
World Cultural Heritage status. According to the organisation, it’s
an “outstanding example of new town planning and architecture
in the early 20th century” and it also cites the “significance of the
various trends of the Modern Movement adapted for cultural and
climate conditions”.
Because, of course, what was functional in the subzero
temperatures of Weimar in winter didn’t work in the
Mediterranean sunlit city. Smaller windows, sun breaks, buildings
raised on pilotis (stilt-type columns), and lush
roof gardens became distinctly Tel Avivian adaptations.
And while prior to its UNESCO accreditation the White City
had been looking less than pristine – abandoned, graffitied, and
downtrodden thanks to suburbanisation and the disintegration
of cheap building materials – in the last 15 years, Tel Aviv has
been undergoing a make-over, with extensive renovations and
restorations getting it ready to impress discerning travellers with
an eye for historic architecture.
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