פרופ' רגינה הס

In 2018, I spent four months doing research at the Azrieli Architectural Archive after I had published the conference proceedings titled Architecture and its Actors: Practice and Public in Postwar Society (in German). During that process, new society-related fields had opened up, giving rise to historical research on architecture based on subject-centered constellations such as origins, studies, and networks. By relating oeuvre, experience, and knowledge, my research gained relevance for contextualizing architectural history, especially in studying the period after WW II.

Awarded with the Azrieli Architectural Archive Scholarship, I started comparing Postwar German and Israeli architecture. I was especially interested in the linkage of players, narratives, practices, places, milieus, and creative strategies, and focused on Arieh Sharon as well as on Dan Zur and Lipa Yahalom. The fact that Eran Neuman's major exhibition on Arieh Sharon took place in 2018 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art was a major driving force for my research.

During my stay, I examined the estates of Sharon and Yahalom & Zur in the AAA and visited relevant buildings and parks. I established contacts in the Israeli community of architectural historians and visited other research institutes and libraries. To date, I have been able to publish the special issue Housing Regimes. New Approaches to a State-Citizen-Relation with Yael Allweil (Kritische Berichte 2, vol. 48, 2020), containing the article (Re-)Building Nations: Housing Regimes in Postwar Israel and Germany as direct outcome of my research (p. 48-60). Furthermore, I published the volume Between Conventional and Experimental. Mass Housing and Prefabrication in Modernist Architecture with Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler, Tzafrir Fainholtz and Yael Allweil (Leuven University Press, 2024) as a result of the DOCOMOMO Israel – Germany Conference From Conventional to Experimental: Mass Housing and Prefabrication at the Technion in 2021. I also traveled with Munich students to Tel Aviv and the AAA for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus and gave a lecture at the conference Networking the MENA. Interregional transfers in times of global transformation at the Hebrew University in 2022. A joint Israeli-German application is currently being reviewed. The scholarship at the AAA was an important stepping stone for the establishment of international research. I received a very warm welcome and excellent support, and I am still grateful for this opportunity.