Category: Session 6. Erich Mendelsohn’s work in Palestine

Amnon Bar Or, Tal Gazit

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We suggest a practical approach for conserving two privately owned iconic buildings designed by Erich Mendelsohn. Both buildings were designed during his time in Mandatory Palestine, they are located in the heart of the city and are part of the historic urban landscape of Western Jerusalem:
Residence Of Salman Schocken, 1934 – 1936 in Rehavia.
Anglo-Palestine Bank, 1937 – 1939 on Jaffa Street.

Both buildings have been recognized as having cultural heritage values, yet for years they have been the subject for various initiatives, ignoring the buildings’ historic values. In Israel, economic feasibility usually relies on private projects and the public usually cannot access the buildings. However, there are examples from around the world of historical buildings that have been designated public uses, exposing the public to their cultural values. We should adopt this approach and create a balance between preservation requirements and economic viability.

We believe that the solution can be achieved through a three-tiered method:

Restore – conservation of the building and returning it to its original state, preserving its cultural values at the highest level.

Reduce – Use the mechanism of TBR (Transfer of Building Rights), giving the private owner an incentive to preserve the historic building and build a new structure elsewhere, whilst receiving additional building rights as a compensation.

Reclaim – creating a practical architectural solution that will preserve the cultural heritage values of the buildings, and define significant parts of it as publicly accessible.

In our lecture we will give a brief introduction to, past, present, and future issues related to these tiers, proposing the guidelines for a conservation-centered approach.

We hope that this program will be an example for an integrated solution.

 

Amnon Bar Or – Tal Gazit Architects Ltd. Since its establishment by architect Amnon Bar Or in the Old City of Safed in 1978, the office concentrated on planning and management of the Safed Old City’s Restoration Project and planning of the preservation and restoration in the excavations of the Roman-Byzantine City in Bet-She`an.

In 1990, the office switched its main arena to Tel Aviv. Within the parameters of its activities, the office deals with historical and architectural documentation; planning of preservation and restoration; planning and reuse of historic buildings for contemporary needs and preservation and development of historic sites.

Within the framework of its activities in historic Tel Aviv, the office planned the architectural preservation of some of the most significant historical sites in the city, such as Levine House (the Old Russian Embassy, 46 Rothschild St., Tel Aviv) and the planning, preservation and relocation of buildings in the Sarona Templar Colony (Kaplan St. Tel Aviv).

Amnon Bar Or. Prof. Architect, General Manager and Owners. Born in 1951. Established his independent firm “Amnon Bar Or Architects Ltd.” in 1990. General Manager and owners ever since

Tal Gazit. Architect, Partner. Born in 1980. Graduate of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Haifa Technion (2009). Joined the office in 2009. Associate Partner since 2012. Partner since 2016

Oren Eldar

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In the small private archive of the architect Gad (Gûnter) Ascher, former Chief Architect of the Israeli Public Works Department (PWD), lies a reduced-size photo copy of a building. Stored in the basements of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the photo copy is the single architectural document of the dozens of buildings he planned. It depicts a small local Telephone Exchange structure in Haifa, in which the articulation of a repetitive structural beam is the main theme. Beside the plans, a tiny, rapidly-made sketch drawn in black pen, shows the future image of the building. Drawn in a perspectival view and with a low vanishing points, this sketch, produced by the fairly unheard of architect, is reminiscent of the great master architect, Erich Mendlesohn, for whom Ascher worked during Mendelsohn’s tenure in Jerusalem from 1935 to 1939.

This paper asks to take Ascher’s sketch and his relation to Erich Mendelsohn in order to explore the question of influence in architecture. Ascher’s works will be explored in order to investigate whether the heritage of a master architect exists only in his own works, or whether it permeates through the works of his former employees. Beyond exploring the general idea of influence in architectural production, this paper asks to complicate this theme through engaging with the history of the “International style”, an era in which a dogmatic approach created a similar image of architecture, and arguably, sought to universalise style itself.

This inquiry will be demonstrated not only through Ascher’s design in Mendelsohn’s office. Rather, I will explore the dozens of governmental buildings designed by him, such as post offices and telephone exchanges, health facilities, city councils and courts he had planned throughout Israel. Tracing his development as an architect during his study years in Berlin and in Stuttgart, his works in other offices, and the experience he gained while working at the British PWD, this paper will suggest the idea of influence not as a matter of quotation, but rather an inherent aspect of design, through which historical relationship can be traced.

 

Oren Eldar is an architect, scholar, and lecturer, based in Tel Aviv. He is the curator of “Cloud-to-Ground”, the Israeli Pavilion for the upcoming 18th Venice Biennale of Architecture. The exhibition will focus on the architecture of telecommunication infrastructure in Israel – a subject on which he is currently completing his Master’s thesis as an Azrieli Fellow at Tel Aviv University.

Eldar received his B.Arch from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 2011, and had been teaching since theory and history of architecture, as well as studio classes in different schools – Bezalel, the Technion In Haifa, Shenkar College in Tel Aviv and the new Negev School of Architecture in Be’er Sheva.

On the last decade, he has conducted various pieces of research, among them for the “urburb” exhibition, which represented Israel in Venice in 2014 – and published dozens of articles in local and international publications.

 

 

Ada V. Segre & Yulia Leonova

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In 1934 Erich Mendelsohn was commissioned his first building in Eretz Israel, a villa for Chaim Weizmann, “a president-to-be in a state-to-be”. The outstanding status of the client, the zenith of the glory of the architect, his spiritual affinity with the Land of Israel, the exceptional topography of the site, – everything promised that a masterpiece was going to be created. Later recognized as such, the architecture of Weizmann House has been widely researched; less so, the landscaping of the estate.

While being laid out on a hill proportionate to the house, and organically bound with it, the garden is an inseparable part of the Mendelsohn’s volumetric composition. To date, its design is essentially the same as the original; it illustrates Mendelsohn’ approach to landscape architecture: connections between in and out, up and down, orthogonal and circular, static and dynamic.

The well-known expressionist sketches by Mendelsohn – the two arcs outlining sky and earth encircling the building — are literally embodied in the Villa Weizmann setting.

To reach the villa, one has to undertake a ceremonial entrance through the curving drive, which offers a sequence of changing viewpoints of the south façade, the latter being the most representative.

Amongst the garden’s features, the winding terraces are unique: Mendelsohn referred to them as “amphitheatralischen Terrassen”, as they were displayed in a theatrical formation. There are elements in the garden echoing the architectural forms of the building, amongst them those relating to theatrical forms.

All these, whilst they are characteristic of Mendelsohn’s style, also comply with trends in garden design of the first three decades of the 20th century. Amongst them,  the rationalist “architectonic” and the “expressionist” garden inspired by a several metaphysical theories of the milieu of the architect, play a significant role.

To reveal these points, the present contribution is comprised of an outline of the history of the designed landscape, as well as of a description of the garden with its special features. These are contextualized through stylistic analysis and by comparison with other similar Mendelsohn projects. An evaluation of the garden from the conservation perspective, both as part of the whole site and on its own right, is also proposed.

 

Ada Vittorina Segre, A graduate in ornamental horticulture (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1980),  and at the University of Bologna (1986), she specialized in Conservation Studies at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York University (D.Phil 1995), held post-doctoral positions (Technion, 1996),  & at the Centre for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti (Florence, Harvard University, 1997). She has been professionally involved in the conservation of: Secret Gardens at Villa Borghese, Rome and Doria-Pamphilj garden, Genoa & others (1998-2010).  She has undertaken research applied to conservation on Templer’s Sarona, White City Gardens, Weizmann Institute landscape, Bialik garden in Tel Aviv, Ramat Hanadiv Memorial Gardens. She teaches Conservation of Historic Landscapes at the Western Galilee College  and art history at the Technion (2010-2023).  

Yulia Leonova, MA in Art History at the Russian State University for the Humanities. Research: Garden City Movement, Modernism, Expressionism, Crystal Architecture, White City of Tel Aviv, Patrick Geddes, Israeli Brutalism. Content expert in Ideal Spaces Working Group (Karlsruhe). Published articles on: Houses of H. N. Bialik in Tel Aviv and A. M. Gorky in Moscow; Light and shadow in Israeli architecture of the 1930s–1960s; Patrick Geddes’ ‘Inner Gardens’ of Tel Aviv; “Production” of city space by the artists of the early Tel Aviv; etc. Presented at the international conferences in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Porto.  Participated in Venice Biennale for Architecture 2018.