Bauhaus

When walking around Tel-Aviv, the trick is to look up. This way you'll surely discover the truely unique characteristic of the city - the architecture. For those who weren't aware of it - and I was one of them - Tel Aviv is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and why? Because it is the only city in the whole world that has a high concertration of Bauhaus style buildings in the city center; approximately 3,500. Sure, other European cities have Bauhaus buildings, but only spread out on the periphery. This, unbelievably, renders Tel Aviv a wonder of the modern world. All of this, and more, I learned on the Bauhaus tour of Tel-Aviv.

First, a little history. Bauhaus, translated literally as "Building House" is an artistic style originating in Weimar, Germany, where the Bauhaus school was founded in 1919. The ideaology behind Bauhaus architecture is socialism, which motivated a number of Israeli architects to go and study at the school in the 1920s. The school itself only existed for 14 years before the Nazis closed it down in 1933 for being incompatible with their right-wing extremist ideaology, but thankfully, this was enough time for the young architects to learn a thing or two and bring their knowledge back to Tel-Aviv.

As our guide Michal explained, in line with its idealogy, true Bauhaus architecture is characterised by simple, functional buildings with straight edges, flat roofs, balconies and little decoration; sounds boring doesn't it. The Bauhaus motto is "Function Before Form", meaning that the exterior shape of the building is determined by the functionally designed interior, and not the other way around, which often results in Bauhaus buildings being asymmetrical. I'm sure, however, that it may not have escaped your notice, that Bauhaus Tel-Aviv is somewhat more adventurous than this philosophy suggests, with symmetry, rounded edges and minimalisic industrial style decorations, owing to the influence of other architectural styles at the time, thus producing a Bauhaus style with an architectural character unique to the city.


The tour focused my attention on architectural aspects of the city that totally escaped my notice, even though I often pass by these areas, most notably, Kikar Dizengoff, once an important meeting point in the center of the city to which people came specially from all over the country, and now, a run-down, unattractive passing point on the way to more interesting things. Well this landmark, which so many of us pass without a second look is, remarkably, the only completely Bauhaus square in the world! Yes, take a closer look, cos I never noticed it. The pedestrian over-pass and over-grown trees admittadly don't help matters, but thankfully plans are already in motion to knock the square back to ground level and return it to its former glory. Well, we wait with baited breath!

In the meantime, it was great to get a little more intimate with my current home-town and adopted city. It definately made me appreciate it a lot more.