bauhaus in Tel Aviv

On my trip to Tel Aviv last month, I wandered into a gift shop and picked up a deck of cards with drawings of Tel Aviv’s most iconic Bauhaus buildings and their addresses. A couple of days later, on a morning when I had nothing better to do, I made pins in Google Maps for each of them, and committed to the not-too-hard task of locating just the ones along Rothschild Blvd that weren’t so out of the way as to delay my arrival at Mae cafe for an espresso freddo. There are about 4,000 total in Tel Aviv after all. I took some pictures, I enjoyed the shade of the Ficus and Poinciana trees, and I thought about German post-war architecture, like normal people do.

The photos below capture, in order: Engel House, Beit Sarah and Samuel Rapaport, Beit Shimon Stern, Beit Rubinsky, and Rothschild 115, which looked Bauhaus to me and probably is - but was not Beit Aharonovich, the building I was looking for, immediately to the right of this one. I guess Beit Aharonovich was not impressive enough to catch my eye.

What can I say about these structures that hasn’t already been said? All I can really add is my personal experience… I love Bauhaus for the simplicity and focus on function, including in the way it was adapted to suit Tel Aviv’s environment (white plaster, narrower windows, and stilted columns for less heat and more airflow). But for me, the Bauhaus style is especially significant in Tel Aviv as it represented modernity, progress, and renewal amidst a (Zionist) dream, of creating a modern democratic Jewish state that reflected socialist and communal principles. Many of the Bauhaus architects that emigrated from Europe to Palestine were part of the broader Zionist movement… Anyway this dream, architecturally, in terms of urban planning, was part of a larger trend of making Palestine/Israel grand and impressive to the West.

A story I read online: “The city’s first mayor Meir Dizengoff was said to have wanted to impress Winston Churchill (who was due for a visit in 1921) by creating a tree-lined boulevard to rival any in Europe. Mature trees were transplanted from nearby locations, but they did not have time to establish themselves in the arid soil. When people thronged to see Churchill, some climbed the trees, toppling them. Churchill reportedly said, “That which has no roots is bound to wither,” a sly, barbed remark, coming from the man who was Secretary of State for the Colonies during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine.”

Today, Rothschild Blvd certainly does rival any European boulevard. It is alive, beautiful, and full of stunning Bauhaus architecture, described by many as a sort of outdoor museum to the Bauhaus movement. You protect what is in a museum, but you also only engage with it from afar. Are European values in the Middle East something to protect, and yet engage with from afar too? And more importantly, is that a good or a bad thing?