Archinect - News

This Tel Aviv residential project blends two contemporary buildings with a historic villa

2022-07-26T17:41:00-04:00

Tel Aviv-based Bar Orian Architects has unveiled a new residential project that blends past and present by integrating two contemporary buildings with a historic, early 20th-century villa.

The development, titled Villa Rothschild, sits along Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard. The original structure known as the Beit Awad Villa was designed in 1926 by Russian architect Joseph Berlin. The Eclectic-era building is part of Tel Aviv’s “White City,” which comprises a collection of over 4,000 buildings designed in the Bauhaus style and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Photo: Amit Geron

The two new building additions in Villa Rothschild each stand seven stories and feature penthouses, a fifth-floor villa, and two garden villas. The pre-existing Beit Awad Villa was marked for preservation under Tel Aviv’s preservation plan and zoning policies, so Bar Orian Architects were restricted from making any changes to the building apart from an addition to the basement floor. In order to...

How did Tel Aviv become the site of so many Bauhaus buildings?

2018-12-28T14:41:00-05:00

The Tel Aviv coastline is crowded with a mishmash of skyscrapers, Ottoman-inspired villas, and four-story cubes painted a sunlight-reflecting shade of white. But in a place where stylistic jumble is the standard, one strain stands out as the defining architectural aesthetic and a beloved household name: Bauhaus.

Design fans may know to pin Tel Aviv as an architectural destination for its unlikely connection to the Bauhaus movement, which originated in Dessau, Germany, but few know why the style traveled over 2,000 miles during the 1930's.

Krieger House | Courtesy the rothschild 71 hotel, Tel-Aviv

When the Nazi party gained control of Germany, the Bauhaus School was one of several creative institutions to be shut down, causing its faculty to disperse across the globe. While some of the more famous names from the school, such as Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer found a foothold in America, several of its students found opportunities in The White City.

According to Artsy, "The 700 total students that enrolled at the Bauhaus during its short 14-year existence dispersed globally, too, including four architects—Arieh Sharon, Munio Gitai Weinraub, Shmuel Mestechkin, and Shlomo Bernstein—who moved to British Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. There, they found a rare opportunity, a modernist archi...

Penda's Tel Aviv Arcades offer arches and terraces rather than the generic glass tower

2018-06-25T15:39:00-04:00

The Austrian branch of Penda reveals a residential high-rise for Tel Aviv defined by arches and cascading terraces. The design responds to the broad display of the city’s Bauhaus era and responds to the city's climate challenges rather than opting for another glass tower.

Tel Aviv Arcades rendering by Penda Austria. Image: Penda Austria.

Defined by the arch, the structure's design allows for views while still minimizing openings to direct sunlight in order to cooperate with the mediterranean climate. Varying terraces are used as a shading devices while also functioning as a vertical neighborhood for residents.

Tel Aviv Arcades rendering by Penda Austria. Image: Penda Austria.

The condominium tower measures approximately 380 feet in height featuring about 58 square feet of residential areas on 18 floors. The building will ...

World's tallest (mostly) Lego tower built in memory of eight-year-old cancer victim

2018-01-02T18:50:00-05:00

Plastic building blocks are once again reaching for the sky. This time, it was the city of Tel Aviv that made an attempt to build the tallest Lego tower — or, officially, the tallest structure built with interlocking plastic bricks, not all of them made by the Danish toy giant. [...] a joint effort between Tel Aviv City Hall and Young Engineers, an organization that promotes learning with toy bricks. The tower is intended to honor a child who died from cancer.

"Omer Tower" was built in memory of Omer Sayag, himself an avid fan of the colorful plastic blocks, who lost his battle with cancer in 2014 at the age of 8.

Clocking in at a height of 35.85 meters (117 feet and 7 inches), the structure on Tel Aviv's Rabin Square beat previous world records including the most recent one in Milan in 2015.

New Rothschild Tower by Richard Meier & Partners Completes in Tel Aviv's White City

2017-09-11T14:10:00-04:00

Tel Aviv has the largest concentration of buildings in the Bauhaus/International Style of any city in the world. With a collection of over 4,000 buildings covering almost one and a half square miles, the White City, as it is called, was largely created in the 1930s by a group of 200 German Jewish architects fleeing Nazi Germany who were heavily influenced by Bauhaus principles as well as modernists like Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn.

Photo Credit: Roland Halbe.

Drawing on this rich architectural history, Richard Meier & Partners have just completed a new residential tower that draws inspiration from the Bauhaus design principles of its neighbors in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Meier commented on the surroundings saying "the great thing about the site is that it's related to the whole city; it's related to all of the wonderful buildings of the 1930s and to the historic buildings of Rothschild Boulevard. It makes me very happy to be in s...

Germany to help fund renovations of Tel Aviv's historic Bauhaus buildings

2015-05-15T15:29:00-04:00

Thousands of Bauhaus buildings are concentrated in a central district of Tel Aviv, called the "White City." It became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003. These houses were built by Jewish architects who fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to what was the British Mandate of Palestine at the time. They designed their houses according to the principles developed by Walter Gropius [...] Germany plans to invest 2.8 million euros ($3.2 million) to help preserve the cultural heritage.

Sky Cars Coming to Tel Aviv in 2015

2014-06-26T12:34:00-04:00

Officials in Tel Aviv, Israel, announced this week that the long-anticipated skyTran system should be up and running by the end of 2015. Tel Aviv — globally famous for its terminally congested traffic — will serve as the pilot program for planned systems in Europe, India and the United States. [...] Call up a sky car on your smart phone and the pod-shaped vehicle will pick you up at a designated station and whisk you off to any other station on the system.

A cartoon encyclopedia of Tel Aviv's buildings

2014-01-13T15:22:00-05:00

Israeli designer Avner Gicelter gives loving homage to Tel Aviv's array of architectural styles in his illustrated "TLV Buildings" project. In the continuing series, Gicelter faithfully represents each building's facade in simple, colorful, almost 8-bit renderings, sometimes retaining small individuating elements such as rooftop gardens or balcony banners. Presented in isolation from their urban context (although titled with their address), the buildings receive equal respect and altogether could form a simple reference guide for Tel Aviv's architecture. Gicelter hopes to update the series weekly with a new illustration.

The 'starchitect' on Tel Aviv's skyline

2013-07-24T11:38:00-04:00

Richard Meier is the last of the New York Five architects to keep working in minimalist white. Now that theme will be towering over Tel Aviv - the American's luxury high-rise is almost finished.

In Tel Aviv, Bauhaus rules

2012-03-30T18:12:00-04:00

Israel’s ages-old city, Jerusalem, is rightly famous for its warm, honey-colored limestone architecture. But its lazily hip rival, Tel Aviv, has lately begun garnering attention for a contrasting — and equally abundant — assemblage of cool and creamy Bauhaus buildings.

Opening Ceremony of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Herta and Paul Amir Building

2011-11-07T13:53:48-05:00

Following up on the festive opening ceremony of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art's brand new Herta and Paul Amir Building last week, we have received photos from the celebrations on October 30.

Just a few hours later, on November 1, the auditorium was also the venue for a symposium on the architecture of contemporary museums, featuring the building's architect Preston Scott Cohen in conversation with Eran Neuman and a roster of international architects, including Sylvia Lavin, Jeff Kipnis, Dan Sherer, Jesse Reiser, Inaki Abalos and Ben Van Berkel.

The 195,000-square-foot building houses an installation of the museum’s comprehensive collection of Israeli art, as well as its architecture and design galleries, drawings and prints galleries, photography study center, art library, new auditorium, a large gallery for temporary exhibitions and public amenities.

The Herta and Paul Amir Building officially opened to the public on November 2.

All photos courtesy of Preston Scott Cohen.

Opening ceremony ...

Tel Aviv Museum of Art opens its new Herta and Paul Amir Building tomorrow

2011-11-01T13:47:40-04:00

Tomorrow, November 2, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art will celebrate the public opening of its $55 million Herta and Paul Amir Building. The 195,000-square-foot building adds a visionary work of contemporary architecture to the Museum’s campus in the heart of Tel Aviv and provides a new international landmark for Israel’s cultural capital.

See also our recent in-depth ShowCase Feature on the building.

A labor of love or a grave mistake?

2011-05-17T20:59:26-04:00

The new wing of TAU's school of architecture, designed by benefactor David Azrieli, has unleashed a firestorm.