How Did Tel Aviv Become a Beacon For Stunning Bauhaus Architecture?
While Germany has been busy celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus architecture in 2019,cTel Aviv has been honoring the movement and preparing for its own architectural commemoration in 2020: the 20th anniversary of its Bauhaus Center on Dizengoff Street, a bustling thoroughfare named after the city’s first mayor. Though it may be unknown to the typical person, Tel Aviv is actually home to approximately 4,000 edifices of Bauhaus architecture (2,000 of which are protected under preservation law), the world’s largest collection of Bauhaus-inspired buildings. But how did the Bauhaus style come to Israel from Germany? 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.
“In other countries we see Bauhaus buildings usually in some isolation or as neighborhoods, but rarely as
connected urban tissues.” says Dr. Micha Gross, cofounder of the Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv. This onrush of Bauhaus-designed buildings in the mid-20th century in one city led to the distinct recognition of it being named a modern UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Also known as the International Style, the Bauhaus movement was selected in large part due to its functionality, clean lines, and lack of adornment. This minimalist approach was well-suited to the socialist-Zionist ideal of pre-state Israel, which perceived the construction of a new city as central to the creation of a new, more just society. “The spirit of modernism manifests itself in our Bauhaus architecture, and was important in the foundation of the democratic State of Israel—a fact people tend to forget,” says Gross. “The movement can be seen as a reaction to the conservative regimes prior to World World I, especially in Europe. Decorations reflecting different social classes are avoided within modern architecture, and replaced by functionalism. Bauhaus architecture has, for this reason, by definition, some socialist elements with egalitarian purposes too.”
In designing the new buildings in the 1930s and 1940s, the architects also made accommodations for the hot, sunny Israeli climate by using less glass (smaller windows) to minimize heat, making flat roofs so that these could be used as an outdoor social space, and incorporating massive balconies to catch the Mediterranean breezes and sunbreakers to provide shade.
Their style is also known as the International Style, a term coined by American architects Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock for their 1932 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The majority of Tel Aviv’s examples can be found in the central White City – a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is protected as “an outstanding example of new town planning and architecture in the early 20th century”. The Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv was founded in the area in 2000 to increase awareness of the heritage and encourage preservation works. It hosts a library, a shop and a gallery for exhibitions, and offers architectural tours for visitors and enthusiasts. Co-founder Micha Gross has chosen 10 of the best residential examples for Dezeen, which all feature in a 2015 book he edited titled Preservation and Renewal.
