The first afternoon and evening in Israel is coming to an end. Late at night I am writing in the hotel in Tel Aviv after an evening of walking and talking and eating and seeing mostly the older portions of the city. As always the shock of a new place is creating a sense of excitement that I should at this point be able to anticipate but somehow never do.
Neil Payton, who also lives in Los Angeles, and a fellow architect also participating in the K-8 Charrette, and I arrived at Ben Gurion airport late in the afternoon and fairly wooshed through customs. We were greeted by planner and educator Yodan Raffi (I promise to update the spelling of your name). He in turn whisked us to his car. Flying in we could clearly see the outlying districts of Tel Aviv, clusters of high rise apartments, warehouse districts, and freeways. The feeling was akin to something one might see over the outskirts of any large city in Southern Europe.
The drive into Tel Aviv was equally similar to the drive to or from the airport of any large city in a developed nation (the airport itself was a wonderful mixture of various tropes of Louis Kahn vaults and concrete and limestone meets late modernism). The freeway got us there functionally and it was not until we turned off into the streets of Tel Aviv that I knew I had arrived within something unique. I was fortunate to have my impressions shaped by both an able guide, Yodan who knows the city well, and by Neil who has previously studied and written about this town.
In Los Angeles I have grown increasingly interested in the idea that urbanism can be both compact, dense and green (in the sense of retaining that quality of open space that has been a hallmark of Los Angeles “cityness”). Yet I have such difficulty describing this to those that hire us and often seem hidebound, with our default encouragement, to create urban design formulas and guidelines that line the backs of sidewalks with continuous main street type buildings. I always feel that traditional urban architecture as seen in northern Europe or Manhattan, Washington DC or Chicago makes little sense for Los Angeles yet have few precedents to refer to if I want to move in an alternative direction. Perimeter-block urbanism is all the rage in the US and the only question seems to be how dense can it be before the envelope of public patience is stretched to the political breaking point.
What a revelation then to discover the built-form patterns of Tel Aviv, based in part on a city plan done by the English planner Patrick Geddes. In the 1930s he laid out the parameters for a garden city that encouraged both front yard and side yard setbacks along major and minor streets. He also aid out boulevards with park strips in their middles for strolling and public open spaces and squares (many of which will soon be hopefully restored). At the time it Geddes worked on Tel Aviv it was a small city, yet the plan today seems well suited to serve a larger metropolitan population of 2,000,000.
Many of the major street run east to west and capture the cooling breezes off the Mediterranean sea. At the same time the plan both incorporates existing streets and districts established by the German and British colonies as well as streets that pushed northward to Arab towns and villages. It is a paragon of both rationality, idealism, the best scientific thought of its day (that still has eco-relevance in the present) and pragmatism. Today of course these streets are built up but everywhere the sense of urbanism shot through with intimate open spaces and landscape buffers is palpable. Combined with the international style architecture – many of the older four and five-story apartment buildings stand on thin columns or pilotis sweeping the open space under the dwellings – the architecture and urban typology create a unique environment that fits it’s temparate climate and as such is a model that Los Angeles, in its attempt to stay open even as it densifies, could certainly learn from.
Unfortunately in Tel Aviv, despite attempts to integrate old with new, many of the newer higher buildings, indeed skyscrapers, fit uncomfortably within this earlier and idealistic garden-city schema. The older architecture which is limited to 40 to 60 feet in height well makes a dense and lively boulevard scene full of people strolling, sitting at cafes, walking their dogs and generally hanging out into the evening. It also ably forms both busy sidewalks and quiet residential side streets despite the network of landscape and open space buffers that erode the continuity of individual block forms, a continuity that is thought in many circles to be essential for good pedestrian-oriented urbanism. In essence the proportion of buildings to open space is still great enough to maintain urban continuity but open enough to create a sense of airy gracefulness that is compelling in its sense of relaxation. It is my dream of the 45′ high compact, dense and green city come to life.
Based upon seeing this alone I could go home tomorrow and feel that I have observed what previously was an inchoate dream and learned something invaluable that I can now articulate and put into immediate design practice. What is perhaps more of a challenge is that when one is – as one almost always is – humbled by the experience of a new culture and place in comparison to one’s own culture and place, one wonders what if anything a foreigner, indeed this foreigner to Israel, can offer that is as valuable to my hosts as their own urban place is valuable to me.
Unfortunately all these photos are taken at night as the sun sets by 5:00pm at this time of year. Tomorrow – off to Kiryat Shmona.
