My daughter, the student of architecture, took a professional look at Tel Aviv streets. In the background, the Azrieli Towers and the Ministry of Defense with its helipad.
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
The plaza in the foreground is what catches my eye - sterile concrete, brutally free of shade, the cold steel sculpture made from industrial materials. Almost a cruel joke - you want a tree? Here you go. The bikes chained to the railing because no proper bike rack is provided. In the background, "modern" buildings that are boxes free from detail because ornament costs money. Hardly any humans in sight. Who wants to roast on that shadeless plaza? Where are we? Atlanta? Shanghai? Milan? We could be anywhere. The typical modern landscape in any modern big city - horrid.
The "cold steel sculpture" actually is a rusty iron ouvre-d'art, white-hot under the summer sun. Horrid - may be.
But the point is that our taste is unfashionable, maybe wrong. I hated my daughter's Renewal Project for the City of Holon, yet she received 96 (of 100) for it. Which means that she knows exactly what her teachers want.
What do you want? Tel Aviv to adopt the architectural style of a Polish shtetl? Of fin-de-siecle Vienna? Or 16th Century Florence? We should strive to be like Shanghai or Tokyo.
You could do a lot worse than to look like Florence or Vienna. The shtetl look leaves something to be desired but it least it was on a human scale. The market square was (on market days at least) a lively place, full of farmers and merchants and customers and squawking geese, etc. It wouldn't have hurt if Israel had a distinctively local architecture, something that was in keeping with its climate and history. Perhaps the windows and plazas should have been shaded from the relentless sun by awnings or overhangs, etc. Bright tropical colors could have been used instead of dull white, etc.
Shanghai is a wonderful city but not for its architecture, except for the pre-war buildings. The modern skyscrapers do not excite me. Skyscrapers are fundamentally dull buildings - vertical warehouses for humans, best seen from a great distance.
My daughter, the student of architecture, took a professional look at Tel Aviv streets. In the background, the Azrieli Towers and the Ministry of Defense with its helipad.
4 comments:
The plaza in the foreground is what catches my eye - sterile concrete, brutally free of shade, the cold steel sculpture made from industrial materials. Almost a cruel joke - you want a tree? Here you go. The bikes chained to the railing because no proper bike rack is provided. In the background, "modern" buildings that are boxes free from detail because ornament costs money. Hardly any humans in sight. Who wants to roast on that shadeless plaza? Where are we? Atlanta? Shanghai? Milan? We could be anywhere. The typical modern landscape in any modern big city - horrid.
K
The "cold steel sculpture" actually is a rusty iron ouvre-d'art, white-hot under the summer sun. Horrid - may be.
But the point is that our taste is unfashionable, maybe wrong. I hated my daughter's Renewal Project for the City of Holon, yet she received 96 (of 100) for it. Which means that she knows exactly what her teachers want.
What do you want? Tel Aviv to adopt the architectural style of a Polish shtetl? Of fin-de-siecle Vienna? Or 16th Century Florence? We should strive to be like Shanghai or Tokyo.
You could do a lot worse than to look like Florence or Vienna. The shtetl look leaves something to be desired but it least it was on a human scale. The market square was (on market days at least) a lively place, full of farmers and merchants and customers and squawking geese, etc. It wouldn't have hurt if Israel had a distinctively local architecture, something that was in keeping with its climate and history. Perhaps the windows and plazas should have been shaded from the relentless sun by awnings or overhangs, etc. Bright tropical colors could have been used instead of dull white, etc.
Shanghai is a wonderful city but not for its architecture, except for the pre-war buildings. The modern skyscrapers do not excite me. Skyscrapers are fundamentally dull buildings - vertical warehouses for humans, best seen from a great distance.
K
> best seen from a great distance
Yes indeed.
I always wondered what the ancient temple looked like before the Roman punitive actions - but I guess we don't know, do we.
Maybe Israel could do a marked variation on the Arab architecture - this Yemeni stuff is amazing:
http://electivedecisions.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/photo_lg_yemen.jpg
The greatest modern architecture is undoubtedly the Stalinist stuff like Moscow State U. Which is the least modernist...
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