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