Yibaneh!

Architectural Review, The, August, 2004 by Timothy Brittain-Catlin

JEWISH IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

Edited by Angeli Sachs and Edward van Voolen. Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel. 2004. [pounds sterling]45

The Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam is presenting this summer an exhibition called Yibaneh! (There shall be built!): Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture, described as 'the first international survey of architecture for Jewish institutions from the late twentieth century to the present day'. This bilingual book, in English and German, is its catalogue. The exhibition is based on 16 projects of which four are Israeli and the others European and American, and they are each presented here in the form of some excellent photography and a short introduction by contributors who include Wolfgang Pehnt, Hans Ibelings, and Aaron Betsky. Preceding the projects are a series of essays, all concise but effective, on the nature of Jewish architecture, including a useful piece by Michael Levin on Israeli architecture since the early twentieth century.

The question is really whether the 16 chosen projects can adequately live up to the ambitious implications of the title. I shall happily repeat my theory that the whole picture of what has constituted Jewish architecture has been distorted by the erasure of much of the work and memory of Erich Mendelsohn by the Nazis, by his professional rivals in America, and by those who demolished the Schocken store in Stuttgart. Had Mendelsohn ever achieved the lasting recognition he is due, the entire picture would be different. As it is, 'Jewish' architecture is extremely hard to define, having no continuous central theme and having suffered such appalling destruction in the European countries where it was once strongest. The projects here are Jewish memorial museums of various kinds, synagogues and schools. In other words, the selection has a distient flavour of Jewish revival, rather than Jewish continuity, and although that is a fine subject in itself, it is perhaps not exactly what the title suggests. It must have been difficult, then, to select modern Israeli buildings: the Botta synagogue is fully justified here, the Gehry museum project probably unavoidable; but I would personally have substituted the excellent International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem, by Guggenheim, Bloch and Mintz, for the unexceptional school in Haifa by the Mansfeld family.