Tel Aviv: From Dream To City

Architectural Review, The, May, 2000 by Timothy Brittain-Catlin

By Joachim Schlor, London: Reaktion Books. 1999. [pounds]19.95

Lord Melchett described the history of Tel Aviv as 'the most romantic story in urban development that perhaps has ever been told'; just as the persecuted European Jew will, in Israel, develop into a 'strong, erect and fine specimen of manhood, so will the city of Tel Aviv acquire beauty'. If the results are 'incongruous, ugly, passionate', as Hector Bolitho wrote in 1933, it is because of the strange way that this new city enters into the depths of soul; an 'expression of an ecstasy' devoid of great public monuments but adored by its inhabitants.

Joachim Schlor is a cultural historian based in Potsdam, and his sources are nearly all German, with no reference to untranslated Hebrew material. But this German viewpoint, following the humiliated immigrants of the '30s as they rebuild their lives from nothing, and the process whereby Tel Aviv recreated Jewish life in Berlin when the original no longer existed, is central to understanding the place. This is not an architecture book -- it has no plans and very few photographs -- but with its broad cultural, social and political canvas it is most definitely a book for architects and planners. I have seen no other book that describes this extraordinary city so well.