TEL-AVIV, July 15, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – While many in the Israeli city of Tel
Aviv start the weekend at a sidewalk cafe, there is a small group of visitors
walking the streets in search of Bauhaus buildings.
Practitioners of the minimalist architectural movement, founded in Germany
a century ago, were among European Jews who fled to British-ruled Palestine
when the Nazis took power.
Today Tel Aviv is a leading repository of the modernist style that
celebrates its 100th year in 2019.
Bauhaus and its variations are prominent among the 4,000 buildings which
make up what is known as Tel Aviv’s White City, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The name comes from the white-painted facades, which together with rounded
balconies epitomise the Bauhaus style.
The Bauhaus design school was founded in Weimar, Germany, by Walter
Gropius in April 1919, exactly a decade after Tel Aviv was born as a small
seaside village on sand dunes near the ancient Mediterranean port of Jaffa.
Driven out by the Nazis in 1933, Bauhaus is part of the modernist movement
that had emerged in the 1920s.
In a break with the past it favoured a functional aesthetic and the use of
glass, steel or concrete.
– World’s biggest –
On the streets of Tel Aviv, a group of about 30 from Germany, Austria,
Switzerland and Sweden were on a walking tour organised by the Bauhaus
Centre, which is headed by co-founder Micha Gross.
The Swiss psychologist and architecture enthusiast told AFP that no other
city in the world has a larger collection of Bauhaus buildings than Tel Aviv.
UNESCO says that the master development plan was the work of Britain’s Sir
Patrick Geddes, a leading modernist.
“Tel Aviv is his only large-scale urban realisation,” its World Heritage
website says.
The first stop on the Bauhaus Centre tour was Shulamit Square, just off
Tel Aviv’s central Dizengoff Street.
With its sleek, rounded buildings, the site embodies the way Bauhaus
shaped the city with its ethos of seeking to create homes for all social
classes.
Unlike their predecessors who built for the German climate, the architects
who settled in Tel Aviv had to adapt their work to the local climate.
They used less glass to minimise heat and incorporated balconies to catch
the sea breezes.
Another stop was at nearby Dizengoff Square, a city landmark dominated by
prominent Bauhaus buildings, including the immaculate white Hotel Cinema.
Gross says that while the number of visitors to the Bauhaus Centre has
tripled in recent years, the White City is more of an impulse destination
than Jerusalem and its holy sites, which every year attract millions of
visitors.
Katell Piboules and Yann Becouary are two French visitors to the centre in
their 40s.
Armed with detailed maps showing Bauhaus gems they walk the streets
unaccompanied.
“There are a lot of things to see here,” says Piboules, adding that she
and her companion are not great beachgoers.
They say that while some buildings are well-restored and worth seeing,
others leave much to be desired.
“Maintaining and restoring these buildings is complex,” says Gross, who
explains that it takes between eight to 10 years to renovate a building.
Most of these 1930s buildings are in private hands and restoring them
depends on the goodwill of their owners, who get no public funding for the
projects.
– International style –
Architect Sharon Golan Yaron is content manager of the White City Centre,
set up in 2015 by the Tel Aviv city council and the German government to
“preserve the heritage of the White City”.
She says that while the Bauhaus influence is notable, other architectural
styles have shaped Tel Aviv.
Iconic Swiss-born modernist Le Corbusier in particular left his mark, she
says, adding that rather than using Bauhaus as a blanket term it would be
more accurate to describe Tel Aviv’s architectural heritage as
“international”.
The international style emphasises space as opposed to mass.
It spread throughout the world until the 1980s, driven by the followers of
Le Corbusier, Gropius and Oscar Niemeyer.
Unlike some other heritage buildings, says Golan Yaron, those of the White
City are still lived in.
She adds that their architects worked by the socialist-Zionist ideals of
their time which saw the building of the new city as part of the creation of
a new society, culminating in 1948 with the establishment of the state of
Israel.
“It is the physical expression of Zionism,” she says.