This last week was spent more outside than inside the library. Isabelle and I were able to take a break from our Tel Aviv routine, with some time spent on the road.
Before the weekend began, however, we were treated to a guided tour of Tel Aviv's notorious Central Bus Station, which opened in 1993 after a twenty-five year (!) planning and development process. As a case study in passed architectural fashions, including "megastructure" and "brutalism," the Central Bus Station is famous as a proof of their failings. But as an example of how unofficial (and "outsider") communities can establish "urban ecosystems" within abandoned infrastructure, the Central Bus Station is fascinating -- and a lot of fun, if you don't mind grime, confusion, and the feel of a dystopian future experienced today.
Highlights included a walk through "Little Manila," on level 4, and visit to the "Yung YiDiSH" museum and book warehouse, hiding behind an apparently-abandoned storefront on level 2. We weren't taken into the infamous "Bat Cave," an abandoned theater in which lives a special species of flying rodent. In any case, it was a stimulating visit, so thanks to Matthew Weinstein for arranging the tour...!
The week itself started with more time in the library; additional revisions to my article about the National Library of Israel; and another visit to Tichonet highschool, where I was invited by Shlomit Dekel to review work prepared by a different student cohort. She had also invited another guest, Eran Wexler of the City of Tel Aviv's Northern Planning Department. He gave a very interesting presentation about approved plans for development in the coastal properties north of the Yarkon up to Herzlyah. Wexler emphasized the plan's consistency with the characteristics of Geddes' original Tel Aviv plan, in contrast to the anti-urban, low-density development typical between 1970 and 2000. Mixed use, "complete streets," and connection to the coast were among the principles explicitly incorporated into the plan. If the future development indeed aligns with what was presented, Tel Aviv north of the Yarkon might indeed provide for its residents the kind of urban vitality that the public associates today only with the city's historical core.
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On a personal note, this week was mostly about our son Yoav's visit! His university's spring break came early this year, and so we arranged for Yoav to visit us for a week. After almost 24-hour on the road (and in the air), Yoav arrived Sunday night.
We spent our time together doing simple things: walking up and around Tel Aviv's boulevard, visiting the Tel Aviv Museum (where we saw this very interesting exhibit concerning shared holy places in Jerusalem and other places), eating fish at Manta Ray, and commenting on the number of people jamming every corner cafe.
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I wanted to make Yoav's visit a bit more than just "hanging out with the 'rents," and so we booked a room in Eilat and embarked Wednesday on an overnight journey to the southern tip of Israel. For once, the weather cooperated, and Yoav experienced a bit of "early summer" to contrast with Durham, North Carolina's ongoing winter season.
Our first stop was Dani Karavan's "Monument to the Negev Brigade" (1963-1968), an early example of environmental art that includes also architectural elements of some interest. Like the other pieces by Karavan that I have experienced, I appreciate the work more for the artist's obvious intentions than for my experience of the actual project.
More than half a century has taken its toll on rough, exposed concrete, but the biggest surprise for me was the artist's neglecting to treat the earth itself in any way. Rather than paved surfaces, or carved surfaces, the ground between the "new" ground (the sculptural pieces) is left alone... like rocky dirt. Perhaps this was a statement of the elemental character of the sculpture, but the result was simply messy and contrasted only weakly with the sculptural forms.
About twenty miles south of Be'er Sheva is Ashalim, an agricultural community that is also home to a new solar energy farm, created by Negev Energy, Inc.
From what we can tell from the road, an array of mirrors directs light towards the tower for collection. Key to the project is a "solar battery" system based on molten salt, which will serve a turbine to generate electricity on a 24 hour cycle, even when the sun isn't out. The "heavy infrastructure" character of this project may have been what Assaf Eilat (Chairman of Israel's Electricity Authority) had in mind when he cautioned about premature adoption of "revolutionary" technologies. Now that the cost of PV has dropped so considerably, the "dispersed production" paradigm is already cheaper than the the approach taken at Ashalim.
Continuing south, we arrived at Sde Boker, David Ben Gurion's "retirement" kibbutz and also home to Ben Gurion University's Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. Among the institutes is the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research and the Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental and Energy Research, where I had originally planned to spend my sabbatical. For all the intellectual potential of participating in Sde Boker's academic community, it remains remote from pretty much everything else, and so I'm glad that I made arrangements instead to reside in Tel Aviv.
One of the buildings on the campus was a visible example of the "morphological" design approach, taught to generations of Israeli architecture students by Alfred Neumann and, later, Zvi Hecker. I don't know the provenance of this particular building, but I always enjoy it when I come across something like this.
Less than an hour later, we rolled into Mitzpe Ramon, where we took Yoav on his very first road trip when he was less than a year old. The town is as "nothing" as we remember it, but the view over the crater to the south never gets old.
In Mitzpe Ramon, urban fauna is natural fauna, so we exchanged looks with a family of ibexes that were otherwise attending to the discarded of chips they had found.
It was another two hours to get to Eilat, at the north end of the Gulf of Aqaba. (The Gulf of Aqaba is a narrow finger of water that extends up from the main body of the Red Sea.) It's hard not to relax when one encounters the sea coast after driving through the desert, although Eilat's climate is usually as harsh as its rocky hinterlands.
Of course, Eilat is known mostly as a resort town, which means (in Israel) that the city is a mix of "development modernist" architecture and "honky-tonk" commercialism. In the 35 years since I had previously visited, they've built a lot more of the latter than the former...
Furthermore, even the honky-tonk may be on its way out, now that Vegas-style entertainment has come to town. "What goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas," according to the popular saying, but it turns out it's not true. Vegas-style architecture, at least, has left Vegas and has conspired to do its thing also in Eilat. But, for what purpose, I cannot say -- at least, to tell from these buildings' exteriors.
As for us, we came for the water and what lies under it: the coral reefs, the northernmost habitats of such aquatic life. Our original plan was to snorkel at the reserved beach, but water temperatures were a bit on the cool side. So we went instead to the Underwater Observatory Marine Park, probably the next best thing?
There are indeed extensive under-water viewing rooms adjacent to living coral structures, and the whole facility is sufficiently interesting enough to keep us occupied, even if our "child" is 19 years old. We came, we saw, and we took pictures.
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Then, it was time to return to Tel Aviv. Rather than take the road via Mitzpe Ramon, we traveled north via Sdom, adjacent to the Dead Sea. The landscape was as starkly barren as on the way south, but the rock formations at the edge of the rift valley were generally more interesting. Sight of the Dead Sea is confusing, however, since the blue of the water belies its sterile salinity.
The trip up out of the valley brought us again to "high desert," although once past the town of Arad, we could see the results of recent rains: tiny tufts of green spread out on the rocky terrain.
We were lucky to have an invitation for dinner in Omer, Be'er Sheva's professional and academic bedroom community. My colleague Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler and her husband Daniel Gitler hosted the three of us, and we had the chance to meet her family -- a wonderful evening! Part of the evening was spent in conversation with her father, the hydrologist Yiftah Ben-Asher, who has contributed to Israel's water sector through his work on the relationship between water, soil, and crop growth, among other things. After the long drive, I was too tired to speak with him coherently about his work, so I may just have to follow up some other time. Nevertheless, we all had a great time, not the least due to the taste of Daniel's hot-sauce, for which I was especially grateful.
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Yoav leaves Saturday afternoon, and so his departure provides the coda for this week's activities. Before wrapping up, I wanted to mention auspicious news that came in by email over the night: the final acceptance by Journal of Architecture of my paper on Amalie Rothschild's artwork for architectural settings.
Left: Amalie Rothschild (1916-2001), in yellow, among other Baltimore artists. Right, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School (completed 1973), with mosaics by AR.
The research topic got me into conversations about Baltimore's public art, partly through my study of Rothschild's involvement in the 1% for Art movement both as advocate and as artist. It's a topic that continues to resonate, even during my time in Tel Aviv. The relationship between architecture and art (and architects and artists) is the subject of the paper, which documents Rothschild's work and her collaboration with Percival Goodman, architect for Baltimore Hebrew Congregation's 1948 building, and with other architects two decades later. I'm excited that this research will, finally, be published, after having sat on it for so long before creating a suitable draft for submission to journals.
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