ד״ר אדר׳ ארז גולני

Evolutionary History of Architecture in Israel – A Synoptic View

The research project constructs an inclusive overview of architecture in Israel from the 1920s to the present and represents it as a diagram within a single view.

The main premise behind the project is that there is much to be gained by looking at the whole. The story of architecture in Israel does not belong to an individual or a group, not to any building or building type, and not to a sector or a moment. Rather, it belongs to a multiplicity of issues and things. The story of this architecture belongs to all that is wrapped up in buildings: the drama of competing claims and interests, the pathos of change and loss, the rituals of everyday life, the turbulent participation of individuals and movements, the function of technology and the constant judgment of new architectural ideas, all jostling for position at the profession and the academy.

The project responds to an opportunity. Nearly all theory of architecture in Israel is today linked to a particular personified position and its associated value system. It has become a prerequisite of architecture theory—a qualifying method, to understanding architecture’s quest for uniqueness, the cogency of differing views, and the plurality of individual statements and ideological branches. With that in mind, the research project is interested in a general inquiry about the nature of plurality, rather than in understanding parts or in promoting a contestation between them.

The project is an attempt to visualize a comprehensive evolution of architecture in Israel since 1920 in a clear and structured manner. It builds on the foundation of previous, exemplary works. Already in 1896, in A History of Architecture—what was to become a classic, Sir Fletcher Banister constructed ‘The Tree of Architecture’ to demonstrate the main growth of various styles and how they are linked and meshed. At the turn of the 20th Century, Charles Jencks published his influential work: ‘The Century is Over, Evolutionary Tree of Twentieth-Century Architecture’, and two subsequent evolutionary diagrams of Post-Modern architecture. Then, a most persuasive example is the 2008 ‘Architecture – a Synoptic Vision’ by Adrian Meyer et al. This work is a detailed representation of predominantly European architectural development. Other notable examples are: ‘Modernist Art History’ of Alfred H. Barr, the founding curator of the Museum of Modern Art, Yoshio Futagawa’s ‘History of Modern Houses’, Paul Makovsky’s ‘Movement Timeline’, and the painted analyses of historic developments by Shelley Ward. Regardless of such contributions to architecture’s theory, no major research project has so far examined architecture in Israel with an equivalent analytical method.

The project is a critical exploration of continuity and associations in Israeli architecture along a century. It is formed of three main layers: an intellectual argument, interaction of diverse content along a timeline, and artistic statement.