Tel-Aviv a cent ans ! 1909-2009 : un siècle de globalisation au Proche-Orient

Abstract

Putting Tel Aviv’s development into perspective, this contribution suggests “reading” Israel’s economical and cultural capital – Tel-Aviv – as the successful implementation of 20th century European ideologies in the Middle East, Jaffa, Palestine. The starting point of this paper is the proclamation of Tel-Aviv as a World Cultural Heritage site for its unique urban and historical fabric, commonly known as the “White City” or the Bauhaus City. But how this city – generally considered as “devoid of history” – too set foot in History? And how from the one storey houses of the first neighborhood of Tel-Aviv, did it become within few decades the showcase of a renowned German architecture and arts school, the Bauhaus? How did it turn into the global city it is today within a century, with the most prestigious architects, the “starchitects”, launching again Tel-Aviv as a complex mix of scales, places and moments. This chain of events, once analyzed and linked, shed light on Tel-Aviv as an amazing place for thinking the articulation of the local and the global.

Keywords

• globalization
• Tel-Aviv
• Middle East
• modernism
• architecture