By Yehuda Tziyon

Tel Aviv is Israel’s modern city – the beachside metropolis known for its nightlife, restaurants and 24-hour bustle. However, if you delve beneath the surface a bit, a rich architectural history can be found that sets Tel Aviv apart from any other city.

A group of young European architects who had studied at the renowned Bauhaus school of design – and subsequently fled Nazi Germany and immigrated to the Mandatory territory of Eretz Israel in the 1930s – brought their skills and talents to the fledgling city. Over the next decade, they would design and build thousands of structures, resulting in a „White City” of Bauhaus architecture on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea – the largest such collection of white buildings in the world.

It’s no wonder that in 2003, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed Tel Aviv’s White City a World Cultural Heritage site, as „an outstanding example of new town planning and architecture in the early 20th century.” The citation recognized the unique adaptation of modern international architectural trends to the cultural, climatic and local traditions of the city.

„We are very proud of our ‘White City,'” explains Micha Gross, who along with his wife, Shlomit, has for the past 11 years run the Bauhaus Center, which offers tours of the Tel Aviv neighborhoods dominated by Bauhaus buildings. „Tourists from all over the world are just amazed when they learn that there’s such a huge collection of buildings in the modernist style in Tel Aviv.”

Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus Center offers tours of the Tel Aviv neighborhoods dominated by Bauhaus buildings.

What is Bauhaus modernist architecture and how did the staunchly European discipline end up in the desert dunes of Tel Aviv? It’s all a matter of historical timing and Middle Eastern flexibility, says Gross, who immigrated to Israel from Switzerland 18 years ago.

Bauhaus style a perfect fit for early Tel Aviv

The first Jewish settlement north of Jaffa was Neve Tzedek, which took shape between 1887 and 1896. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909, when Jews in the nearby Arab town of Jaffa decided to create a Jewish garden suburb along the beach just a few miles away. They established a company called Ahuzat Bayit, and with the financial assistance of the Jewish National Fund, purchased some 12 acres of sand dunes north of Jaffa. In 1910, the suburb was named Tel Aviv after Nahum Sokolow’s translation of Altneuland, Theodor Herzl’s fictional depiction of the Jewish state.

The fledgling city’s population began growing in leaps and bounds, requiring substantial construction. A Scottish architect, Patrick Geddes, designed a housing development plan in 1925, soon to be followed by massive immigration from Europe.

The arrival in Eretz Israel of the gifted European architects coincided with growing anti-Semitism in Europe, as large groups of Jewish immigrants started arriving in the Mandatory territory in the early 20th century, first from Russia and Poland, and later from Germany with the rise to power of Hitler in 1933. The designers, given carte blanche, began implementing their modernist vision for the growing city in the early 1930s.

Before the influence of the European- and Bauhaus-trained architects, most buildings in Tel Aviv were modeled after traditional Middle Eastern dwellings, in which flat-topped or domed stone structures were built around a central courtyard.

An example of Bauhaus style on Frug Street

„A lot of buildings needed to be constructed, and that was the style they brought with them – the modernist International Style, or as we call it today, the Bauhaus style,” says Gross. „The Tel Aviv city engineer in those days, Yaakov Ben-Sira, liked the modernist style and told the architects to go and spread that style throughout their new buildings in the city.”

The main influences on modernist architecture in Tel Aviv came from the teachings of the famed Bauhaus („house of construction”) school of design that operated in Weimar, Germany, from 1919 to 1933. Some 20 young immigrant architects to Eretz Israel, including Arie Sharon, Shmuel Mistechkin and Shlomo Bernstein, studied there or at similar schools elsewhere in Europe.

„All these architects had to work together, meeting in coffee shops, on street corners, where there was a synthesis of various European influences, all coming together in one place,” Dr. Michael Levin, a professor at the Hebrew University, and an expert on Israel’s Bauhaus architecture, told the travel website The Indulged Traveler. „But they were very lucky, because Tel Aviv was a new city, and these architects had hundreds of commissions to create new buildings. This could never have happened in Europe because all the cities there had already been built up.”

According to Daniella Luxembourg , the founder and curator of the Bauhaus Museum, which opened in Tel Aviv in 2008, the impact of the Bauhaus school spread to the rest of Europe and has remained a big influence on architecture ever since. „We see the world differently as a result of the Bauhaus design, typography, graphics and color theory,” she told Architecture Record magazine.

Simple, clean and white

About 4,000 buildings in the new modernist style were built in Tel Aviv between 1932 and 1948, the year the state of Israel was created.

The Bauhaus architectural style follows a few aesthetical ground rules: simplicity, clean cuts, white walls and no unnecessary embellishments. According to Gross, the buildings are characterized by „an avoidance of decoration, lack of classic symmetry which was so typical of previous architectural design, right angles, huge balconies, small windows and very functional architecture.”

In 1984, in celebration of Tel Aviv’s 75th anniversary, an exhibition was held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art entitled „White City, International Style Architecture in Israel, Portrait of an Era,” which some people credit with awakening an awareness of the architectural treasures and for the coining of the name „White City,” named after the buildings’ white veneer (although the Israeli poet Natan Alterman probably was the first to use the phrase „White City”).

Since by then many of the buildings had fallen into a state of neglect and disrepair, the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality set up a conservation team in 1991 called Modern Heritage Preservation. The team was directed by the architect Nitza Metzger-Szmuk, who had conducted an architectural survey of the city’s international building styles in the 1980s, resulting in a book, Dwelling on the Dunes, and the city’s first preservation plan.

Szmuk’s task was to convince Tel Avivians that the Bauhaus buildings were worth saving. „I had to convince them, and pressure them, to consider their houses works of art,” she told the Israeli daily Haaretz. „It’s clear today that no culture can be created by constantly erasing the past. Architecture is our cultural dynasty, and each of its periods has its own worth. Remove one stone, and the entire edifice will collapse.”

Preserving and restoring the buildings

The public’s awareness over the threat to the buildings was heightened in 1996, when the White City was listed as a World Monuments Fund endangered site. And the best news arrived in 2003, when UNESCO made its proclamation declaring Tel Aviv’s White City a World Cultural Heritage site.

It was too late for some of the buildings that had been neglected to the point of ruin and were demolished. However, thousands of Bauhaus buildings remained and the municipality passed legislation in 2009 for the preservation and restoration of more than 1,000 of them.

„The question is what happens to the buildings. After UNESCO made its designation, there was more awareness of the problem of restoring and renovating the White City,” says Gross.”But in actuality, the Tel Aviv municipality doesn’t give money for the restoration. They have a program whereby they give the owners the option of adding a floor or two to existing buildings, and when the owner sells those apartments, part of the money has to go to restoring the rest of the building.”

Even without that incentive, there are many unprotected Bauhaus buildings undergoing renovation in Tel Aviv, Gross explained, saying that it often involved less red tape to restore unprotected buildings.

Dizengoff Circle, slated for renovation, was the heart of the early Bauhaus movement.

One Tel Aviv company, White City Buildings, specializes in private restoration and conservation of Bauhaus architecture, carefully maintaining strict and qualitative planning, adhering to the unique architecture of the buildings. According to its website, the company purchases buildings that are designated for conservation throughout the city, preserves them and resells them as complete buildings or as individual apartments.

One development that could provide a huge boost to the restoration of the White City is the plan to renovate Dizengoff Circle, which was the heart of the Bauhaus movement from the 1930s through the 1960s, but which has fallen into neglect in recent decades. „This is very important because the moment you have a symbol or central point like Dizengoff Circle being renovated, it will affect everything else and raise more awareness,” says Gross. „The public will realize it’s worthwhile to renovate the rest of the White City.”

Touring the white sights

Though many Tel Aviv residents go about their business without giving a second thought to the architectural treasure in their backyard, the rest of the world has taken notice. Tourists patronize the Bauhaus Museum and join the walking tours offered by the Bauhaus Center. The main touring areas are Rothschild Boulevard (and the surrounding area of Sheinkin Street), and Dizengoff, Bialik, Mazeh and Kalisher streets.

According to Gross, the tours are regularly patronized by officials from foreign governments eager to learn how Israel is dealing with preservation of landmarks in the middle of a modern city. „In recent months, we’ve had the German minister of interior and about 50 members of the Paris municipality on our tours,” says Gross. „In general, tourists are very interested in the subject, and in a place they can get more information, books and maps as well as tours. „We see our job as being educational. We want to show the public that there’s something wonderful going on in Tel Aviv, and that preserving it will be for the benefit of the whole population of the city.”

New York-based travel writer David Kaufman, who has written extensively about Tel Aviv for publications including the New York Times, says the preservation efforts could be better, „But it appears as if the municipality is revving up its promotions machines and clearly recognizes that Tel Aviv’s architectural patrimony is an unrivaled global gem.”

The Tel Aviv skyline, dominated by skyscrapers and high-rises, may dwarf the relatively diminutive, stately off-white buildings that were built in another era. But thanks to the efforts of city officials, architecture and history buffs and the high-profile recognition by UNESCO, the Tel Aviv White City of Bauhaus buildings will be enjoyed by future generations as an historic freeze-frame in time.