of Experience)8 and E. C. Relph (Place and Placelessness: Research in Planning and Design).9 Space is the container, the physical location, whereas place involves social activities and collective identities.10 These concepts emerged from the field of geography and shifted into social and cultural geography. Christian Norberg-Schulz’s 1979 book, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, similarly distinguishes between space and place.11 Some critics viewed this book as a direct attack on the modernist movement in architecture that was seen to produce spaces but not places.12
Constructing a Sense of Place: Architecture and the Zionist Discourse also identifies an ideological tension in the 1930s between the architecture of the Chug, which followed the modern trends of the International Style, and the architecture of Erich Mendelsohn in Palestine. The Chug applied architecture that was motivated by socialist leadership and inspired by Herzl’s “political Zionism”; Mendelsohn, on the contrary, followed the ideologies of other Zionist leaders such as Martin Buber and Ahad Ha’am, who promoted “cultural Zionism.” The result was the utilization of a new modern architecture by members of the Chug versus the development of a local modernism with oriental accents in the architecture of Mendelsohn.13
The essay “Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948” (2005) explores “the role of architecture and town-planning in the struggles of territory and identity in the city turned neighborhood of Jaffa.”14 The essay concludes that the Zionist leadership encouraged separation between Tel Aviv and Jaffa through the use of modern architecture and town planning, which is similar to colonialism that generated modernity and progress, versus tradition and stagnation.15
The book A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv, and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space, continues discussing the concept of space versus place as it “examines how the creation of Tel Aviv has both shaped and reflected collective identity.”16 The establishment of Tel Aviv as “the first Hebrew city” was an attempt to transform the Jews from being the “people of space” to a people having a “place” in history.17
The application of the concept of space versus place has become a fashionable method among geographers and historians in recent years, and in many cases used as a tool to promote political agendas. As the study in this book is a product of the field of art history, space and place are interpreted in different manner. While space is a physical entity that reflects the formality of architecture, place stands for its social, cultural, and historical meaning. Zionist architecture in the early twentieth century vigorously searched to find a correlation between formal manifestation and ideological self-identity.
Notes
1.Aviah Hashimshoni, “Architecture,” in Israel Art, ed. Benjamin Tamuz (Tel Aviv: Massada, 1963), 199-284.
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
4.Mordechai Naor, ed., Tel Aviv at the Beginning 1909-1934 (Jerusalem: Idan, 1984), 42-61.
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid.
7.Haim Yacobi, Constructing a Sense of Place: Architecture and the Zionist Discourse, Design and the Built Environment Series (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2004), 4.
8.Yi-fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).
9.E. C. Relph, Place and Placelessness. Research in Planning and Design (London: Pion, 1976).
10.Yacobi, Constructing a Sense, 5.
11.Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980).
12.Yacobi, Constructing a Sense, 5.
13.Ibid., 17-51.
14.Ibid., 192.
15.Ibid.
16.Barbara E. Mann, A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv, and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), xi.
17.Ibid.
Alexander Levy’s Building and Housing in New Palestine is the most comprehensive proposal for inexpensive and rapid building construction in the early days of the Zionist movement. It meticulously and methodologically reviews the most advanced European theories and studies relevant to the topic and concludes with concrete and realistic recommendations for implementation. The plan covers such topics as the role of the company in initiating and executing building construction, the crucial availability of materials, the presentation of different types of accommodations, and the utilization and standardization of materials and labor techniques.
Architect Alexander Levy (1883–1942) expressed interest in Zionism after finishing his studies in architecture and starting work for a building company in Berlin in 1907. A year later he offered his services as an architect to Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), then the director of the Palestine office of the Zionist Organization in Jaffa. In November of 1912, Levy prepared four different housing plans for new immigrants in Palestine, and a year later he proposed to organize an exhibition on housing to be displayed during the eleventh
