Zionist Architecture and Town Planning. Nathan Harpaz
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goal was to integrate crafts with techniques of industrial mass production. Muthesius stated in 1914 that architecture was moving toward standardization (“Typisierung”) and claimed that only standardization could introduce a universally valid, self-certain taste.6 At the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition of 1914, there were two powerful buildings on display, the Glass House by Bruno Taut and the Halle des Machines by Walter Gropius. Taut’s structure was a prophecy of the geodesic domes to come, and Gropius’s building was influenced by Peter Behrens and Frank Lloyd Wright (two publications about Wright were issued in Berlin in 1910 and 1911).7
One of the participants in the Werkbund was the German architect Peter Behrens, whose studio was a training facility for architects such as Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, and Le Corbusier. Behrens became rapidly famous because he approached the industrial plant as an architectonic problem and transformed the factory into a dignified place to work. Beside classical elements, he used new materials such as steel and glass to provoke expressive forces.8 Behrens and his theory of inexpensive housing would later become a major inspiration to Alexander Levy’s plan for Jewish housing in Palestine.
The International Style became the mainstream of modern architecture in the 1920s and 1930s. The term originated from the book written by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in conjunction with the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1932. They identified categories of modern architecture that expanded across the world. In an attempt to define the architectural style of their time, they identified three principles key to its expression: volume rather than mass, balance rather than preconceived symmetry, and the expulsion of applied ornament.9
Le Corbusier, a prominent architect of the International Style, introduced the free pillar method which created open space in the ground floor of a dwelling, carrying the load of the structure and leaving the walls without the function of supporting the building. He also emphasized the functional independence of the skeleton and the wall: the skeleton became not only a functional device, but also a vehicle of aesthetics. The inside partitions were used for expressive purpose and spaces alternated between inner and outer ones. Le Corbusier also promoted the roof terrace and saw the flat roof as a spatial extension of the house.
Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus also had a significant impact on the development of modern architecture and the International Style. The school of the Bauhaus continued the idea of the Werkbund in its goal “to unite art and industrial life and to find the keynote for a sound contemporary architecture.”10 The Bauhaus under Gropius used architecture as an inter-medium to unite both art and industry and art and daily life.11 The new Bauhaus building, designed by Gropius at Dessau in 1926, became a major model for modern public and commercial buildings. Gropius demolished the traditional concept of a symmetric and centralized design by separating each section of the building according to its specific function. Each wing of the building was independent and its form followed its function. The Bauhaus building also revealed the application of the glass curtain as a major design element that would be adapted by the International Style. It was the most revolutionary structure in early modernism.12
Town planning was also part of the modern revolution, as the city of the nineteenth century had been criminally neglected by architects and by governments as well.13 The problem of the cities was rapid population growth along with the existence of industry inside populated sections. This led to the concept of “garden cities” or “garden suburbs.” It was an important development but not the end solution. The existing cities posed the main problems, as Tony Garnier (1869–1948), author of the “Industrial City,” foresaw: While Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city, was a social reformer, Garnier introduced the potential architect-planners employed by a government department or a city council.14
Inspired by Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward, Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) wrote To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898), later published as Garden Cities of To-Morrow (1902). In this work, Howard proposed the establishment of urban structures as a synthesis of town and country that would benefit their residents by combining the positive qualities of both the economic development and social life of the city and the environmental advantages and affordable housing of rural areas. Howard summarized this concept in the illustration of three magnets: town, country, and town-country.15 In 1899 Howard founded the Garden City Association, later known as the Town and Country Planning Association. It resulted in the establishment of two garden cities: Letchworth, in 1903, and Welwyn, in the early 1920s, both in Hertfordshire, England.
Howard’s ideas were developed at the same time that many utopians and reformers were attempting to remedy urban and social ills resulting from the Industrial Revolution. These utopians were motivated by the concept of a golden age regarding notions of ideal community and social systems. They dealt with the dilemma of detaching communities from a broken social order and tried to define the corruption within current social systems.16
Various models for treating urban problems in England developed during the late nineteenth century. The “model communities” idea was created by industrialists or other sponsors to promote their ideal industrial society. The model of “alternative communities” grew out of ideologies that went against the established order to solve social problems. In this category of alternative communities we find utopian socialism, aiming to achieve social change for the working class; agrarian socialism, promoting the idea of getting back to the land; sectarian groups, escaping society to fulfill religious beliefs and practices; and anarchist communities, rejecting central control and choosing more cooperative methods.17
Howard’s model has had an enduring influence upon future town planning because he responded to the problems of his time with appropriate solutions for them. Howard found a compromise between the modification of the liberal system and the desire to provide an alternative way of living and working away from established urban areas.18 Howard’s garden city had a significant impact on future urban planning, but had problems with achieving social goals in urban planning designed within a liberal democracy. The ideal of the garden city was significant to urban planning achievements throughout the world because it was actually built, whereas other urban concepts were merely theoretical. Howard’s vision revealed the core dilemmas of liberal democracy: the development of the garden city brought significant improvement in living conditions, but it did not fulfill social ideals.19 The concept of the garden city still has relevance in the twenty-first century as a model for significant regional development on “Greenfield” sites. Howard’s three magnets diagram is still effective with current adjustments as it attracts small towns set in the country and has influenced the New Urbanism, a movement in the United States that promotes walkable neighborhoods with a variety of housing and job types.20
Limiting the size of a community was one of the main features in Howard’s thesis. In Howard’s theory, this prevented the self-destructive forces of an ever-expanding metropolis, and increased social interaction and culture within the community.