Tel Aviv - White City

Between 1933 and the beginning of World War II, thousands of Jewish architects, engineers, and clients fled Germany and Central Europe. Many settled in Tel Aviv, which was expanding rapidly after the city's founding in 1909 and the Patrick Geddes plan of 1925.

Geddes envisioned a garden city adapted to the Mediterranean climate. Following the coastline in one direction and perpendicular in the other, a grid of superblocks with major streets and tree lined boulevards connected different parts of the city. Inside the superblocks, orthogonal but discontinuous residential streets reduced through traffic and were designed primarily for pedestrians and neighborhood life with shared gardens, schools and open spaces.

Within this plan over 4,000 modernist buildings were built in Tel Aviv which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site with the largest concentration of modernist buildings anywhere.

The whitewashed vernacular of the Mediterranean, shaped by climate, material economy, and geometric forms, provided an important reference for the European Modernists who reinterpreted those qualities, and which were then readapted to Tel Aviv.

Generous balconies on every building became outdoor living rooms and connections to the street. Many buildings have curved corners that soften intersections and emphasize movement through the city. Rooftop terraces allow for gathering during cool evenings.

Although Eric Mendelsohn spent relatively little time in Palestine, the influence of his expressive curved modernism with rounded corners, flowing balconies, and sculptural massing can be seen in many Tel Aviv buildings.

The remarkable achievement of Tel Aviv's White City is not only that it contains thousands of modernist buildings, but that these buildings collectively create an urban environment with a rare degree of coherence. Unlike many twentieth-century cities where modern architecture appears as isolated objects, Tel Aviv developed a shared architectural language that gave the city a recognizable identity while allowing individual variation. The buildings respect common setbacks, consistent heights, and generous planting of the Geddes plan which helps coherence.

The city was built parcel by parcel over nearly two decades rather than through comprehensive redevelopment. Because each architect worked within the same planning framework and similar economic constraints, continuity emerged organically rather than through centralized control.

The construction boom in Tel Aviv during the 1930s was financed through a remarkable convergence of immigration, private capital, and favorable economic conditions. The city grew because tens of thousands of individuals brought both financial resources and an urgent need to build. The single most important source of financing was the immigration of German Jews after 1933. Many members of the so-called Fifth Aliyah were professionals, merchants, and industrialists who arrived with significant assets.