23 mai au 23 juin 2006
Exposition réalisée par la Municipalité de Tel Aviv
Stretching between the dunes, along the Mediterranean coast, the « White City » presents all aspects of Modern Movement architecture. Israeli architects who went to European avant-garde schools and trained in the offices of renowned architects, imported the knowledge acquired abroad to generate new forms and give birth to a diversified architectonic language.
Adapting European influences to the climatic conditions, the culture and traditions in local construction produced a rich vernacular vocabulary. The volumetric characteristics, the expressive quality of the curves and the influence of horizontality gave rise to strong interaction between shadow and light, one of the characteristic hallmarks of Tel-Aviv architecture. The use of white roughcast intensifies the beauty of the volumes in the sun, revealing a « White City » which is unique and complex, representative of purist architecture and free of decorations.
The exhibition was conceived to celebrate the inscription of the « White City » in the Unesco World Heritage List in July 2003. Promoted by the Tel-Aviv Town Council and the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, it was created by the architect Nitza Szmuk in cooperation with the architect Tal Eyal, with a layout and graphic presentation by Peter Szmuk and produced by Smadar Timor and Noa Karvan-Cohen.
Tel-Aviv, The White City, enjoys the backing of the Town Council of Tel-Aviv-Yafo and the Museum of Art, the Tel-Aviv Foundation, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Tourism and the Israeli National Commission for Unesco. The presentation of the exhibition in Lausanne is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Israeli General Embassy in Bern.
The catalogue « Des maisons sur le sable. Tel-Aviv, Mouvement Moderne et esprit Bauhaus – Dwellings on the Dunes. Tel-Aviv, Modern Movement and Bauhaus Ideals » by Commissioner Nitza Szmuk was published by Editions de l’Eclat in Paris.