Sharon Rotbard - White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa

WHITE CITY

BLACK CITY

Sharon Rotbard

WHITE CITY

BLACK CITY

Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa

Translated from Hebrew:
Orit Gat

First published in Hebrew by Babel, Tel Aviv 2005
First English-language edition published 2015 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Publication of this book has been supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

GRAHAM FOUNDATION

Copyright Sharon Rotbard 2015

The right of Sharon Rotbard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Translation edited by Ben Du Preez

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 3511 7 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1193 2 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7837 1314 1 ePub
ISBN 978 1 7837 1315 8 Mobi

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset and designed by Melanie Patrick
Printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK

To Mor and Adam

The book will kill the edifice
Victor Hugo

Contents

Cover of the exhibition catalogue, Dwelling on the Dunes, curated by Nitza Szmuk. Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, 2004. Source: Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Part I

WHITE
CITY

They told me that the city is white. Do you see white? I dont see any white.

French architect Jean Nouvel standing on a Tel Aviv rooftop, looking at Tel Aviv for the first time in his life. November 1995

If you will it, this shall not be a legend.

Theodor Herzl, Altneuland, 1902



supporting this endorsement argued that

The White City of Tel Aviv is a synthesis of outstanding significance of the various trends of the Modern Movement in architecture and town planning in the early part of the 20th century. Such influences were adapted to the cultural and climatic conditions of the place, as well as being integrated with local traditions.

Almost a year later, in the spring of 2004, the UNESCO declaration was celebrated in Tel Aviv with a series of events, exhibitions, ceremonies and conferences. This was a culmination of a twenty-year historiographic campaign. The implications of this historiography go far beyond the architectural history of the Modern Movement or its (dis)integration with local traditions, and are rooted in the political history of the Middle East and the State of Israel. This history of Tel Aviv, presented for a moment as an architectural history, can be seen as a part of a wider process in which the physical shaping of Tel Aviv and its political and cultural construction are intertwined, and play a decisive role in the construction of the case, the alibi and the apologetics of the Jewish settlement across the country.

In that sense, exploring the story of this architectural history of Tel Aviv not only reveals some of the true political colours of both modernist and Israeli architecture, but also demonstrates how history can alter the geography.

Tel Avivians walk around with their heads up And now the whole world knows why! advertising campaign for the UNESCO announcement celebrations. Haaretz

President Moshe Katsav congratulates Tel Aviv in the ceremony commending its declaration by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Fredric R. Mann Auditorium (Heichal Hatarbut), Tel Aviv, June 2004. Photograph: Nadav Harel

Book of Paper, Book of Stone

Cities and histories are constructed in a similar manner always by the victor, always for the victor, and always according to the victors record.

As with any given history, a city neither greets everyone equally nor satisfies everyones desires. To physically alter a city and to write history takes a great deal of power, and power too is never distributed equally. Both the physical and cultural space of a city is always subject for challenge and struggle. It is likely that those who control the physical space often control the cultural space, and they are never those who have lost the battle over history. Those who have the power to shape the physical space to suit their needs can easily shape it to suit their values and narrative not only to obtain for their values and narratives a hegemonic stature, but also in accordance with them, to reshape the city. We may formulate this simple state of things in the following paradoxical rule: a city is always a realization of the stories that it tells about itself.

One of the most common means of realizing the stories a city tells about itself is through conservation, and in its reverse, through demolition. Accordingly, whatever is done, not done or undone in the physical body of a city is also a form of historiographic deed because the decision to demolish an old building or to conserve an existing one defines what is fated to be forgotten and what is worthy of remembrance. A city may decide to highlight certain parts of its story deemed worthy of a particular mark by adding a commemorating plaque, erecting a monument, arranging a walking axis, by conservation, restoration or even the reconstruction of a particular building; it can also decide to turn the page, to send in the bulldozers and simply to forget. The relationship between the history of the city and its geography is a direct and necessary one the geography of a city will always tend to conserve the stories to be remembered and to erase the stories to be forgotten.

First a book, then a city. Theodor Herzl, Altneuland, the first edition, 1902, in German and 1904 in Hebrew.

Since the process of the physical building of a city is unavoidably interwoven with the processes of its cultural construction, control over the cultural construct of the city may be proven even more effective and profound than any other political governance or programme. Unlike other forms of authority, cultural hegemony is not only ubiquitous but hidden: it is defined by the unthinkable, suggested by the obvious, cloaked behind the common sense of the rulers and their subjects, and relayed through stories, legends and fables; the cultural construct of a city composes what we tend to designate and identify as normality.