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Globe and Mail, April 11, 2009
From Bauhaus to their house
Led by my guidebook, I slip
down an avenue called Shlomo Hamelech into an airy, tropical paradise. Massive
trees overarch narrow streets dotted with parks and playgrounds. And as those
who laid out this "garden city" in the 1930s intended, cooling Mediterranean
breezes waft past.
But I'm here to see the buildings: low-slung white apartment houses with spare, horizontal lines, porthole windows, sprinklings of fanciful metalwork and mosaics that hint at both Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It's hard to imagine that this tranquil streetscape reflects architectural thinking once radical enough to be banned by the Nazis - or to shape a century's worth of buildings around the world, from Parisian villas to New York office towers.
They are products of a design revolution that shook the world. Tel Aviv's "White
City" - with 4,000 mostly stark-white buildings that follow the modernist
ideas of the German Bauhaus school - is the product of an exodus of people and
ideas that redefined not just this city, but others from Canada to Eastern Russia.
This year, Tel Aviv's centenary celebrations will include events highlighting the White City. And Germany, where the Bauhaus school was founded in 1919, is marking the school's 90th anniversary - especially in Dessau, where the school reached its height before being closed by the Nazis.
Though the name means "building school," the Bauhaus focus was originally on art and design. Founder Walter Gropius hired avant-garde artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee to teach. The school valued transparency, the idea of form following function, and the adaptation of art to machine-age technology - ideas that would carry forward through the 20th century, and come to Tel Aviv through young architects emigrating from Germany and Eastern Europe, including Ze'ev Rechter from Germany and Dov Carmi from Ukraine.
Bauhaus buildings here were inexpensive, simple and adapted to the hot climate. The effect is straightforward and egalitarian, as befitted those who built them: Jewish immigrants with socialist agendas eager to abandon the traditions and styles of Old Europe.
Today, the buildings
off busy Dizengoff Street look lived-in, and fashionable. Take 3 Yael St.: It
rises from a pedestal with a deeply shaded entrance, protruding steel-framed windows
and a set of crisp and modern wrought-iron stairways. It's in good shape too,
its white stucco façade nicely kept up.
But the White City is part of the scenery here, and many other buildings are in dire need of work. Tough economic conditions have discouraged the upkeep of buildings that, while subject to strict municipal regulations, get no public funding.
Micha Gross, of the city's Bauhaus Center, likens Tel Aviv's collection to a Sleeping Beauty emerging from a long slumber. That's why he, his wife and a friend founded the centre nine years ago. "We thought it was important to teach the local population about the wonderful architecture here, and point out that it's worthwhile guarding it," Gross says. "Even though a lot of them aren't that interested."
Today, he says about 50 buildings are renovated each year, and regulations mean that "the original materials - plaster, stones, wood and colours - all have to be used." In some cases, one or two storeys can be added, and the apartments sold to cover costs. That's an incentive for property owners, many of whom don't see the value in such expensive upgrades.
In Germany, the history of the Bauhaus is better known. In Dessau, visitors can tour the original school, designed by Gropius. Built with steel supports and reinforced concrete, it's characterized by a lack of symmetry, clean horizontal lines and a dramatic glass façade. Today, this pioneering complex - an icon of modernism in architecture with seven surviving houses built for its teachers - is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which visitors can stay in dormitory-style accommodation.
Hungarian-born Marcel Breuer, who would become a hugely influential architect and furniture designer, created what came to be called the Wassily chair (after artist Wassily Kandinsky) for the Dessau building. Inspired by the curved handlebars of his German-made bicycle, the chair, still in production, became a Bauhaus icon.
In Berlin, where the last Bauhaus director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, moved the school in 1932, you can also visit the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates (though private homes), another UNESCO site, and a tribute to the Bauhaus era. A Mies house on the Obersee Lake in Berlin - his final work before emigrating to the United States - is also open to the public.
And Berlin's Bauhaus Archives will host The Bauhaus Model, a major exhibit of artifacts assembled from all three Bauhaus cities.
The show will move in November to New York's Museum of Modern Art - where Bauhaus ideas came to North America in a 1932 show organized by Philip Johnson. What Johnson called "the International Style" defined commercial architecture in North America for half a century. In the low-rise buildings off Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, it's all there - the horizontal lines, the same delicacy, the lack of ornamentation and abundant natural light.
*****
Pack your bags
Getting there
El Al flies direct to Tel Aviv from Toronto and Montreal. Air Canada and Delta fly from Canadian airports to Berlin; from there Dessau is 130 kilometres by rail, Weimar 300 kilometres.
Where to stay
David Intercontinental Hotel 12 Kaufman St., Tel Aviv; 972 (3) 7951111; www.ichotelsgroup.com. From $295.
Bauhaus Gropiusallee 38,
Dessau; 49 (340) 6508 251; www.bauhaus-dessau.de.
WHERE TO GO
Tel Aviv White City 46 Herbert Samuel St.; 972 (3) 5166188; www.white-city.co.il. Tourist bureau offers tours and information.
Bauhaus Center, Tel Aviv 99 Dizengoff St.; 972 (3) 5220249; www.bauhaus-center.com. Offers guided tours and audio tours.Bauhaus Archive and Museum of Design Klingelhofferstrase 14, Berlin; 49 (030) 254 0020; www.bauhaus.de. The Bauhaus Model: July 22 to Oct. 4.
But I'm here to see the buildings: low-slung white apartment houses with spare, horizontal lines, porthole windows, sprinklings of fanciful metalwork and mosaics that hint at both Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It's hard to imagine that this tranquil streetscape reflects architectural thinking once radical enough to be banned by the Nazis - or to shape a century's worth of buildings around the world, from Parisian villas to New York office towers.
They are products of a design revolution that shook the world. Tel Aviv's "White
City" - with 4,000 mostly stark-white buildings that follow the modernist
ideas of the German Bauhaus school - is the product of an exodus of people and
ideas that redefined not just this city, but others from Canada to Eastern Russia.This year, Tel Aviv's centenary celebrations will include events highlighting the White City. And Germany, where the Bauhaus school was founded in 1919, is marking the school's 90th anniversary - especially in Dessau, where the school reached its height before being closed by the Nazis.
Though the name means "building school," the Bauhaus focus was originally on art and design. Founder Walter Gropius hired avant-garde artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee to teach. The school valued transparency, the idea of form following function, and the adaptation of art to machine-age technology - ideas that would carry forward through the 20th century, and come to Tel Aviv through young architects emigrating from Germany and Eastern Europe, including Ze'ev Rechter from Germany and Dov Carmi from Ukraine.
Bauhaus buildings here were inexpensive, simple and adapted to the hot climate. The effect is straightforward and egalitarian, as befitted those who built them: Jewish immigrants with socialist agendas eager to abandon the traditions and styles of Old Europe.
Today, the buildings
off busy Dizengoff Street look lived-in, and fashionable. Take 3 Yael St.: It
rises from a pedestal with a deeply shaded entrance, protruding steel-framed windows
and a set of crisp and modern wrought-iron stairways. It's in good shape too,
its white stucco façade nicely kept up.But the White City is part of the scenery here, and many other buildings are in dire need of work. Tough economic conditions have discouraged the upkeep of buildings that, while subject to strict municipal regulations, get no public funding.
Micha Gross, of the city's Bauhaus Center, likens Tel Aviv's collection to a Sleeping Beauty emerging from a long slumber. That's why he, his wife and a friend founded the centre nine years ago. "We thought it was important to teach the local population about the wonderful architecture here, and point out that it's worthwhile guarding it," Gross says. "Even though a lot of them aren't that interested."
Today, he says about 50 buildings are renovated each year, and regulations mean that "the original materials - plaster, stones, wood and colours - all have to be used." In some cases, one or two storeys can be added, and the apartments sold to cover costs. That's an incentive for property owners, many of whom don't see the value in such expensive upgrades.
In Germany, the history of the Bauhaus is better known. In Dessau, visitors can tour the original school, designed by Gropius. Built with steel supports and reinforced concrete, it's characterized by a lack of symmetry, clean horizontal lines and a dramatic glass façade. Today, this pioneering complex - an icon of modernism in architecture with seven surviving houses built for its teachers - is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which visitors can stay in dormitory-style accommodation.
Hungarian-born Marcel Breuer, who would become a hugely influential architect and furniture designer, created what came to be called the Wassily chair (after artist Wassily Kandinsky) for the Dessau building. Inspired by the curved handlebars of his German-made bicycle, the chair, still in production, became a Bauhaus icon.
In Berlin, where the last Bauhaus director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, moved the school in 1932, you can also visit the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates (though private homes), another UNESCO site, and a tribute to the Bauhaus era. A Mies house on the Obersee Lake in Berlin - his final work before emigrating to the United States - is also open to the public.
And Berlin's Bauhaus Archives will host The Bauhaus Model, a major exhibit of artifacts assembled from all three Bauhaus cities.
The show will move in November to New York's Museum of Modern Art - where Bauhaus ideas came to North America in a 1932 show organized by Philip Johnson. What Johnson called "the International Style" defined commercial architecture in North America for half a century. In the low-rise buildings off Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, it's all there - the horizontal lines, the same delicacy, the lack of ornamentation and abundant natural light.
*****
Pack your bags
Getting there
El Al flies direct to Tel Aviv from Toronto and Montreal. Air Canada and Delta fly from Canadian airports to Berlin; from there Dessau is 130 kilometres by rail, Weimar 300 kilometres.
Where to stay
David Intercontinental Hotel 12 Kaufman St., Tel Aviv; 972 (3) 7951111; www.ichotelsgroup.com. From $295.
Bauhaus Gropiusallee 38,
Dessau; 49 (340) 6508 251; www.bauhaus-dessau.de.
WHERE TO GO
Tel Aviv White City 46 Herbert Samuel St.; 972 (3) 5166188; www.white-city.co.il. Tourist bureau offers tours and information.
Bauhaus Center, Tel Aviv 99 Dizengoff St.; 972 (3) 5220249; www.bauhaus-center.com. Offers guided tours and audio tours.Bauhaus Archive and Museum of Design Klingelhofferstrase 14, Berlin; 49 (030) 254 0020; www.bauhaus.de. The Bauhaus Model: July 22 to Oct. 4.