Bauhaus and Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv has been the vanguard of style since the early the early 20th century when Patrick Geddes planned a unique garden city and German-Jewish architects built beautiful white buildings in the latest Bauhaus design.
Over 4,000 Bauhaus-style buildings were constructed in Tel Aviv between 1920 and 1940, by German-Jewish architects who immigrated to the region after the rise of the Nazis.
They based their new architecture for the city on teachings from the renowned German Bauhaus art school, which ran between 1919 and 1933.
When the Nazis rose to power in Germany in 1933, resulting in the closure of the Bauhaus design school that same year, tens of thousands of Jews fled Germany to settle in Mandatory Palestine. With 60,000 new immigrants arriving within just a few short years, housing was urgently needed. Dozens of architects were commissioned to build a new city. Among the most influential European architects selected were six German Jews who had studied at the Bauhaus school in Weimar and Dessau. They were key to the development of Tel Aviv’s “White City,” whose moniker is attributable to its whitewashed façades.
The city of Tel Aviv has always been a melting pot of cultures and artistic styles. In the 1920s, 30s and 40s Tel Aviv was a young, thriving city in the midst of economic, social, cultural and geographical change. It was during this period that the part of Tel Aviv known as “The White City” was built.
The architects and designers of the city could not imagine that their choice of the Bauhaus style of architecture would eventually make Tel Aviv the largest open-air Bauhaus museum in the world. Now over 1000 buildings are listed in this UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site.’
Highlights include:
*96 HaYarkon Street, a stately seafront residence constructed in 1935 which was home to wealthy families, politicians and ambassadors.
*Jacobson’s Building ,built in 1937, is Distinguishable by its impressive staircase and iron railings.
*Rubinsky House( 1935)which boasts round windows, awnings and terraces – hallmarks of the International Style.
* The Cinema Hotel.
*Weizmann House.
* Buildings along Rothschild Boulevard.
More at www.bauhaus-centre.com
