Timna
jewc...@hotmail.com
Timna is surely one of the most spectacular archeological sites that
Israel possesses. The multi-colored sands and erosion-carved
mineral-rich rocks of the southern Arava desert provide a fantastic
backdrop; the legends and riddles that are woven, and for the most part
solved or dispelled, around the ancient copper mines, appeal to the
imagination, especially when one considers that the involvement of
Egypt in Israel touches on some of the most famous Bible stories.
Large concentrations of copper (up to 55%) were already discovered in
early times at Timna; the metal was locked up in ore nodules in the
lower parts of the sandstone cliffs. They were collected, in later
periods dug out in shafts, and smelted into malleable metal over
furnaces, the remains of which can still be seen. The mine at Timna is
the earliest known example of such systematic and sophisticated mining
in antiquity.
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/95mag/timna/shaft.jpg
Timna is not mentioned in the Bible as a topographical name but only as
the name of one of the chiefs descended from Esau (Genesis 36:40).
However there is reference to the mining of copper. In Deuteronomy 8:9
Moses tells the people of Israel that the Promised Land will be a good
land, where "the stones are iron and out of whose hills you will dig
copper." And in the Book of Job there is a poetic evocation of the
lonely business of mining: "And copper is smelted from rock/ Man puts
an end to darkness,/ And to the farthest depths he searches out the
rock/ In gloom and deep shadow./ He digs a shaft far from habitation,/
without foot support they hang/ far from men they float (Job 28:2-4)."
Interestingly enough, not much is known, if at all, about mining of
copper by the Israelites. This is notwithstanding the stories that are
abundant of these mines having belonged to King Solomon. Some esoteric
websites and books will even inform the baffled reader about such
connections as between the sunken land of Atlantis, Solomon's mines and
the Dead Sea scrolls. But in point of fact there is no evidence that
the mines ever belonged to Solomon or any other Israelite king. They
simply did not rule so far south, although they did trade with Egypt
and other neighboring peoples, and they did use - imported - copper
objects: "the pots, shovels and sprinkling bowls; all these objects
that Huram made for King Solomon for the Temple of the Lord were of
burnished copper" (1 Kings 7:45).
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/95mag/timna/carving.jpg
Timna was mainly used by the Egyptians, who started exploiting the
mines from the 13th Century BCE, in cooperation with another local
people, originally from the Arabian peninsula, the Midianites (in the
Bible, Zippora, wife of Moses, was the daughter of their high priest,
Jethro). The Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III (1184-1153 BCE) explains in
a papyrus how people (slaves that were used as workers) and goods were
transported from Egypt to Israel: by galleys. They took off from the
natural harbor on Pharaoh's Island (off the coast of modern Taba) and
continued on donkeys. He further writes that the mines were very
productive and "tens of thousands" of copper bars were brought back to
Egypt. The Egyptians worked up the metal in all sorts of artifacts like
jewelry, cultic objects etcetera.
The Midianites later took over production in the 11th Century when the
Egyptians had left. After that there was a long interval, until the
Romans who had conquered Israel started mining again in the second
century. And then, lastly, the state of Israel itself tried to revive
large scale copper mining under the auspices of the Timna Mining
Company but this was abandoned in 1970.
Visit
The history of the copper mining is explained visually by a multimedia
presentation. Beware of seasickness, as the audience is spun round in
their seats.
After that, most of the main attractions are easily reachable by car.
The Mines
>From the main entrance a sign-posted road leads to the mining area in
the west, near to the natural sandstone arches. It is only one of the
mining areas. After the prehistoric phase during which shafts were made
with stone tools, the Egyptians used metal chisels and hoes to dig
tubular shafts up to 30 meters deep to the ore-rich levels in the
sandstone. They contained niches for hand- and footholds to climb down.
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/95mag/timna/roman.jpg
>From the initial shafts 1 square meter tunnels branch out in all
directions, following the ore vein, and sometimes widening into a
larger chamber where the ore was taken out in bigger quantities. The
ore would have to be dragged out along the tunnels and then hauled up
through the shafts. There are also many cisterns for water collection;
workers must have become extremely thirsty, not only because of the
hard work but also due to the harsh desert conditions. Most shafts
(there are 10.000 of them) are today filled with sand and dirt carried
by the wind or intentionally filled with debris from the mines, and
they remain visible only by plate-like forms on the hills' slopes.
Smelting sites
On the road to the artificial lake, one passes the smelting sites on
the right side, on the summit of the rock. They were fortified, and
this probably means that they date to the first stage of the Egyptian
exploitation of the mines, when they had not befriended the Midianites
just yet.
One enters the site through a gate defended by a tower. On the
north-east side of the plateau a flight of rock steps leads to the top.
There are man-made conical depressions in the flattened rock, which
indicate that this part was used as an altar. The rest of the plateau
is covered with broken slag, probably caused by later looting of copper
pellets.
Along the northern summit the defensive wall is seen. The entrance to
the north-west part used to be flanked by two towers. The eastern
section contained shelters for the workers. On the west was the work
area.
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/95mag/timna/birth.jpg
The smaller furnaces are the oldest; they are 35 cm in diameter and 50
cm deep. They were stirred up by small bellows made of goatskin and
they lacked a tapping pit: the slag ran out on the ground and was then
crushed to extract the copper pellets. The bigger furnaces, from the
Egyptian period, did have tapping pits: larger bellows were used and
their sides are covered with slag-tempered mortar which allowed for
larger temperatures. They also had a dome-shaped top sometimes of
stones to retain the heat.
The Temple of Hathor
>From the parking lot opposite the intriguing rock formation called
Solomon's Pillars the Temple of Hathor can be reached by foot. It is
just around the right corner of the formation. It was in use from
1300-1150 BCE and is, like all the holy places of ancient times, a
simple square enclosure; the rectangle of paved stones around a niche
carved in the rock indicates the cult chamber.
Originally, two columns carrying the head of Hathor would have flanked
the niche. Inside the niche, a statue of her might have stood. Hathor
was the Egyptian goddess of fertility with great popular appeal among
miners, maybe because she also had the power to resurrect the dead and
the miners needed something to boost their courage when working in the
pitch-black shafts. Originally she was represented in the form of a cow
that gave birth daily to Horus the sun-god; later she became a woman
with a cow's head and in still later representations she was all human.
By way of the modern stairs one can view the inscription, in
hieroglyphs, of Ramesses III offering sacrifice to Hathor.
The courtyard of the temple was used as a workshop to produce figurines
made of copper which were used as votive offerings. A great number of
other assorted artifacts were excavated: seals of the Pharaohs who
reigned from the 14th to the 12th century BCE, alabaster vessels, cat
and leopard figurines of faience, seals, beads, scarabs and objects
with the image of Hathor.
After the Egyptians left, the Midianites took over the temple and they
added some features, like an offering bench on the left and a small
room outside against the east wall. They took down the Hathor pillars,
and stood one on its head to form part of the row of standing stones
along the western wall. During this period the building was covered by
a red and yellow tent cloth with beads woven into it; rolls of this
cloth have been excavated.
In addition, Midianite artifacts were discovered: fine decorated
pottery and metal jewelry. The most famous find is that of a copper
snake with gilded head, which reminds one of the story of the copper
snake which Moses placed on a stake in order to save the desert-weary
Israelites from the deadly impact of (real) snake bites (Numbers
21:6-9).
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/95mag/timna/camp.jpg
Mushroom Camp
On the way back in the direction of the entrance is the mushroom camp,
given its name because of a curiously eroded rock of 6 meters high. The
remains of the workers' camp are fenced in. The first one holds a
Midianite temple, like the Hathor temple a simple rectangular
containing an offering bench on the right next to the entrance, a
flat-topped altar stone in the centre, and a line of standing stones
behind an offering basin.
The next area contains the work courtyard, surrounded by living
quarters and storage pits for ore from the mine and water cisterns.
There is a deep stone-lined pit in the courtyard. The ores were pulled
out of the pits and prepared for smelting on the stone table. First
they were crushed and mixed with equally ground fluxes, composed of
iron ore which is also found in Timna, and then water glued the mixture
into pellets.
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/95mag/timna/temple.jpg
A number of tools were found in the area which would have been used for
this: mortars for crushing, granite hammers, anvils and a hand mill.
The pellets were then dropped through the open top of the smelting
furnaces. In the northern part of the courtyard are some casting
furnaces: as soon as the globules came out of the smelting furnace they
were then transferred to the casting furnace which produced the ingots
that were exported to Egypt.
Rock carvings exhibition
Another sign-posted road leads to the rock carvings exhibition. The
original carving in the sandstone is protected by a shield. It dates to
the Egyptian period, from the 13th to the 12th Century BCE and depicted
a procession of chariots, each drawn by two animals and with two human
figures on it, who are armed with a dagger stuck in their loincloth and
who carry a battleaxe and a shield.
Added to this and superimposed are the carvings which are a bit more
visible. They are probably made by the Midianites and represent hunters
who with the aid of a dog are hunting ibex, ostrich and oryx. There is
also a man with a boomerang.
In the neighboring canyon are some copies of rock carvings from the
Arava and Negev deserts. Some are very expressive, for instance the one
of a woman in the throes of giving birth. Another carving illustrates
the competition between the Roman rule and Jewish rebels, and their
respective scripts.
Jewcy
dsha...@hotmail.com
blah.
More shots of Timna:
http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
Additional sites:
Timna valley - Eilat
http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
Timna archaeological map
http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
Timna (JNF)
http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
Deborah
The Department of Defense
<dsha...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130266281....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Excellent article, and a very welcome respite from the usual blah blah
> blah.
>
> More shots of Timna:
> http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
>
> Additional sites:
>
> Timna valley - Eilat
> http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
>
> Timna archaeological map
> http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
>
> Timna (JNF)
> http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
>
> Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
> http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
>
> Deborah
Did you get a message?
Deborah Sharavi
> > blah.
> >
> > More shots of Timna:
> > http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
> >
> > Additional sites:
> >
> > Timna valley - Eilat
> > http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
> >
> > Timna archaeological map
> > http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
> >
> > Timna (JNF)
> > http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
> >
> > Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
> > http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
> > Deborah
The Department of Defense wrote:
> Did you get a message?
>From what?
Deborah
Ariadne
dsha...@hotmail.com wrote:
> Excellent article, and a very welcome respite from the usual blah blah
> blah.
>
> More shots of Timna:
> http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
>
> Additional sites:
>
> Timna valley - Eilat
> http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
>
> Timna archaeological map
> http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
>
> Timna (JNF)
> http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
>
> Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
> http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
>
> Deborah
>
>
>
>
> jewc...@hotmail.com wrote:
> >http://www.jewishmag.co.il/95mag/timna/title.jpg
> >
Great sites. I was wondering if anyone knew of any sites
dealing with modern architecture in Israel.
Ariadne
Deborah Sharavi wrote:
> > > Excellent article, and a very welcome respite from the usual blah blah
> > > blah.
> > >
> > > More shots of Timna:
> > > http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
> > >
> > > Additional sites:
> > >
> > > Timna valley - Eilat
> > > http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
> > >
> > > Timna archaeological map
> > > http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
> > >
> > > Timna (JNF)
> > > http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
> > >
> > > Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
> > > http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
> > > Deborah
>
> The Department of Defense wrote:
> > Did you get a message?
>
> >From what?
>
> Deborah
>
Deborah, this is completely off-topic, but
do you know Klamath Falls?
Our homegrown Muslim terrorists went to a
terrorist training camp there.
Deborah Sharavi
> > > > blah.
> > > >
> > > > More shots of Timna:
> > > > http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
> > > >
> > > > Additional sites:
> > > >
> > > > Timna valley - Eilat
> > > > http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
> > > >
> > > > Timna archaeological map
> > > > http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
> > > >
> > > > Timna (JNF)
> > > > http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
> > > >
> > > > Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
> > > > http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
> > > > Deborah
> >
> > The Department of Defense wrote:
> > > Did you get a message?
> >
> > >From what?
> > Deborah
Ariadne wrote:
> Deborah, this is completely off-topic, but
> do you know Klamath Falls?
Sure do. My son spent part of the summer there (view of the lake), part
of the summer at Newport on the coast (two blocks from the ocean).
>Our homegrown Muslim terrorists went to a
>terrorist training camp there.
That was in the local paper. Nobody paid any attention. The officials
here are more concerned with terrorists bombings in London, Madrid,
elsewhere, than the homegrown variety. Fex, whenever terrorists set off
bombs on the other side of the world, Portland officials, in their
boundless wisdom, increase security on the bridges across the
Willamette River. (Like Arab terrorists know where Portland is, and, if
they do, they really care.)
Deborah
Jewcy
"Deborah Sharavi" <dsha...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130279595.4...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > Excellent article, and a very welcome respite from the usual blah blah
>> > blah.
>> >
>> > More shots of Timna:
>> > http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
>> >
>> > Additional sites:
>> >
>> > Timna valley - Eilat
>> > http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
>> >
>> > Timna archaeological map
>> > http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
>> >
>> > Timna (JNF)
>> > http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
>> >
>> > Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
>> > http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
>> > Deborah
>
> The Department of Defense wrote:
>> Did you get a message?
>
>>From what?
>
> Deborah
From me.
Deborah Sharavi
>>>Did you get a message?
>>>From what?
>>Deborah
Jewcy wrote:
>From me.
Responded.
Deborah
Deborah Sharavi
> > http://www.bibleplaces.com/timnavalley.htm
> >
> > Additional sites:
> >
> > Timna valley - Eilat
> > http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~bazlov/israel/timna.html
> >
> > Timna archaeological map
> > http://www.bibleorigins.net/Timnamaparchaeological.html
> >
> > Timna (JNF)
> > http://www.jnf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Timna
> >
> > Timna: Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines (JVC)
> > http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/timna.html
Ariadne wrote:
> Great sites. I was wondering if anyone knew of any sites
> dealing with modern architecture in Israel.
Architecture or archaeology?
Deborah
Ariadne
Deborah Sharavi wrote:
> Ariadne wrote:
> > Great sites. I was wondering if anyone knew of any sites
> > dealing with modern architecture in Israel.
>
> Architecture or archaeology?
>
> Deborah
ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton
"Ariadne" <ari...@mac.hush.com> wrote in message
news:1130374022.7...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton
"Ariadne" <ari...@mac.hush.com> wrote in message
news:1130374022.7...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
|
ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton
The State of the Arts: Architecture in Israel
(updated 1998)
Ran Shechori
Wherever they settle, migrants tend to build the land of their origins.
When the push towards a large European settlement began in Jerusalem in
the middle of the 19th century, the Christians built their edifices in
the styles they brought with them: the Russians built the Russian
Compound like a fortress, the centre-piece of which is a church with its
onion-shaped domes, surrounded by Crusader-like hospices in large,
elongated structures. Nearby, the Ethiopians built in their own style.
The Templars created neighbourhoods in Haifa, Jerusalem and Jaffa, based
on town plans originating in Southern Germany. The Europeans brought to
the Middle East terraced monumental housing structures made from large
blocks, which were suited to northern climes, the sloping, tiled roofs
which could withstand snowstorms, and building technology using wood
which was not available here.
Christian building was characteristically imperialistic. The religious
motivation was merely a transparent cover for political purposes
obtaining access to and influence on the weak and tottering Ottoman
Empire at a time when all the western nations were intent on dividing up
its properties. The churches and monasteries, schools and orphanages,
hospitals and embassies, were first and foremost a creation of facts,
obtaining a foothold through "settlements." Above the roofs of Jerusalem
there arose church spires, which competed with and dwarfed the minarets
of the mosques.
Since there were no local skilled builders at the beginning of the 19th
century the English had even been forced to import stonecutters from
Malta no antagonism was felt towards the foreign styles that sprouted on
the local landscape. Consciously or not, that century witnessed the
belated victory of the Crusaders, with the creation of a Christian
presence in the Holy Land, which took over the educational and welfare
system and began the Europeanization of this part of the world.
The local population began to copy the European styles of building.
Wealthy Arab families who had left the Old City began building villas
and mansions in the European style, albeit heavily decorated with
traditional Moslem embellishments. The cities that were then growing
adopted European terraced housing and the sloping red-tiled roofs.
The Jews, who had lived till then in homes rented from Arabs, also began
to establish their own independent neighbourhoods. Mishkenot Shaananim
(lit. "tranquil dwellings") was the first such area in Jerusalem. It was
built with the help of the British philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore,
in 1860, as a series of long buildings topped by sloping, red-tiled
roofs. The Jewish Bukharan community built its neighbourhood in the
north of the city as an enclosed locality with large, standardized
houses, also with tiled roofs. In the same way, Meah Shearim ("Hundred
Gates") and Nahlaot ("Inheritances") were built in Jerusalem and, in the
same style, Neve Tzedek ("Dwellings of Righteousness") and Neve Shalom
("Dwelling of Peace") near Jaffa.
Ever since then, three distinguishing features have characterized
Eretz-Israel architecture:
a) Buildings unrelated to the local context;
b) Red-tiled roofs, which came to symbolize the Jewish presence and
represented the idealized "home";
c) Closed-off "ghettoized" buildings that were ethnically, religiously
and socially homogeneous. The desire to live apart from the Arab
population led to a similar wish to live separately from Jews of
different communities and those coming from different places in the
Diaspora.
In the 1920s, as the wave of building among the Jewish population
reached its peak following the increased numbers of people coming in the
waves of immigration, Tel Aviv grew out of deep yearnings for eastern
European cities. Beneath the blue skies and searing sun, engineers and
architects hailing from Russia and Poland rebuilt Odessa, Moscow and
Warsaw. They built with the morphology, motifs and styles suited to the
climate of eastern Europe large, wide windows, balconies, turrets and
towers, attics, and ornamentation.
This eclectic concept was sufficiently flexible to dovetail into the
"Oriental" movement, which sprang up during that period and which had
influenced painting, literature, theatre, dance, and music. It adopted
the ideology of returning to the period of the Bible and perceived a
parallel between the return of the Jewish people to its own land and the
culture of the ancient Mediterranean. The Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel
Aviv, designed by Yosef Berski in 1910, contained features from
Mesopotamia (birthplace of Abraham, founding father of the Jewish
people) and local Arabic elements, inside the contours of a monumental
European building. This is equally true of the Technion in Haifa,
designed by Alexander Baerwald, and of Yosef Minors Bialik House in Tel
Aviv, an exquisite villa with typical Moslem elements such as wooden bay
windows and narrow, arched windows, a truncated dome-shaped ceiling, and
biblical-style ceramics designed at the Bezalel Academy of Art in
Jerusalem.
A similar spirit informed the British architects who were invited to
Palestine by the Mandate authorities. Holiday, Harrison and Chaiken
brought with them an English imperialist world-view of high-quality
British building, making gestures in honour of the local culture,
samples of which in Jerusalem are Harrisons pool and interior courtyard
at the Rockefeller Museum, or Holidays arches and Armenian ceramics in
the Scottish church.
Jewish contextual building was caught in an awkward ambivalence. On the
one hand, people from the first waves of immigrants saw in Arab culture
the conservation of the biblical tradition. The return to the land of
the Patriarchs was a return to the days of the Bible, to Jewish
sovereignty, to working the soil, to the ancient shepherd and peasant,
to mythical heroes and ancient lifestyles. All these were embodied to a
large extent in the way of life of the Arab and the Bedouin, which many
of the first settlers in the new Jewish colonies and later, members of
the Palmah, adopted and copied. An intimate bond was forged between the
vision of a "people in its land" and the Arab presence.
On the other hand, Oriental Romanticism became untenable when faced with
a real war between Arabs and Jews. After the disturbances of 1921 and
1929 and the forging of a Palestinian national identity in the Arab
Revolt of 1936-1939, the dream of integrating into the Arab world was
shattered.
Without noticing it, the "Crusader concept" the importing of a foreign
culture took hold in the country, together with a feeling of distance
and superiority over the local inhabitants. What was now stressed was
difference and uniqueness. The Jewish village, the kibbutz and moshav,
symbolized by small houses with white walls and red roofs built in a
planned, neat, standardized manner, and surrounded by an abundance of
plant life contrasted to the Arab village, which developed organically
from the ground, willy-nilly, scattered, random and unplanned, lacking
greenery or trees. The Jewish water tower became a symbol of the Jewish
settlement, in contra-distinction to the Moslem minaret.
In the 1930s, a number of young architects returned to Palestine after a
period of studies in Paris, Berlin, Ghent and elsewhere. The rise to
power of the Nazis led to the immigration of architects who had absorbed
the spirit of western European avant-gardism. The common denominator
that united them was opposition to the prevailing local eclecticism, and
a contemporary concept of building within the local context. This
concept rejected narrative or symbolism, ornamentation or decoration,
but sought a purely abstract functionalism.
Le Corbusier, in his search for novel, healthy, enlightened, hygienic
and efficient architectural forms, discovered the Mediterranean and the
"white cities" of southern Spain, the French Riviera, southern Italy,
Greece and Turkey, as well as the cities of North Africa with their
cubist-like flat roofs and white walls broken up into small units. He
transformed these principles into the dominant elements of his work and
brought the Mediterranean to Paris, just as those who were influenced by
him brought back this "modern" Mediterranean style to the streets of Tel
Aviv. Talented architects such as Arieh Sharon, Zev Rechter, Dov Carmi,
Yosef Neufeld, Sam Barkai and others built up the "white city" in Tel
Aviv, not as a reflection of Odessa or Warsaw, but as a pure
Mediterranean creation, which lived and breathed the local climate and
atmosphere.
Prior to these architects was Richard Kauffman who came to Palestine
from Germany at the invitation of Dr. Arthur Ruppin in 1920. Kauffman
planned more than 150 settlements, kibbutzim, neighbourhoods and towns,
and more than anyone else, he was responsible for the physical layout of
Jewish settlements in Palestine and for creating a local building
language. The villages, such as Nahalal, which he designed, were
essentially different from those of Europe. He sought inspiration for
the "Ideal City" from the 15th century and from mediaeval monasteries in
order to give an urban expression to his concept of the ideal village or
neighbourhood in the Land of Israel.
He showed sensitivity to conditions of climate, and in a school he built
in Kibbutz Degania in 1928, he utilized a common Arabic element the taka
a small, round window located under the line of the ceiling, in order to
release the hot air trapped between the top of the window and the
ceiling. Instead of copying the taka exactly, Kauffman designed narrow,
long windows running along the entire length of the walls in the
classrooms. Above the roof he built a lightweight canopy to provide
shade and to protect the building from direct sunlight. In later
residential buildings in Tel Aviv, he built simple roofs above the
windows and a cement "apron" above the balconies which cast permanent
shade at the front of the house during the summer months. In the winter,
when the sun is low in the sky, it could penetrate into the interior of
the house.
The modern approach of Kauffman and other architects in the 1930s
created the typical Israeli, and especially Tel Avivian, architecture,
in that it was the first to relate to the local physical and climactic
conditions. The modern, clean, young and clear line also projected
aesthetically Eretz-Israel as a new country and underlined the metaphor
of Zionism as revitalized youthfulness.
Only in the 1960s was there a serious effort to develop an Israeli
architectural style in a wider sense. One of the most interesting
attempts to build a regional structure in a modern-local style was the
municipal building in Bat-Yam designed by Eldar Sharon, Zvi Hecker and
Alfred Neumann. They located the structure on one side of a large
square, like a Greek agora, remains of which have been found in many
places in the eastern Mediterranean basin. The building itself is a
three-storey inverted pyramid, which casts a shadow upon itself. Wind
shafts, similar to those developed in the Persian Gulf, speed the
movement of air in the central atrium-like area, towards which the
municipal offices face. The building is dominated by strong shades of
blue, red and gold and covered with rhomboids and elements reminiscent
of Moslem lattice work. Details of the building are influenced by Le
Corbusiers late phase enriched by rough-case concrete sculpture work.
This was a courageous attempt to enter into a dialogue with the local
culture and its tradition of building, not by imitation and copying of
elements removed from their functional and cultural connection, but an
attempt to build a modern, contemporary "Israeli" structure.
In the 1970s, there was a return to the Crusader tradition. Yakov
Rechters Carmel Hospital in Haifa, the Beit Ariella Library in Tel Aviv,
designed by Moshe Lupenteller and Giora Gremerman, the ORT school on the
Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, designed by
Nadler, Nadler and Bikson, and Ram Karmis faculty of humanities building
on Mount Scopus, like many other buildings in the same period, were
influenced by Crusader structures and by European and American
"brutalism," particularly that of Paul Rudolf. They are characterized by
an aggressive, fortress-like vigour, with enclosed interior areas, an
abundance of towers, truncated corners, leaning walls, narrow windows
and large areas of exposed concrete.
It is possible that this phenomenon was an expression of the feelings of
dominance following the Six-Day War of 1967 or of the fears that existed
in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Yet it was also an attempt to
create a link with a clear-cut symbol of the countrys past.
The post-modernism of the 1980s prepared the ideological ground for a
dialogue with the past and the search for a regional architecture. It
led to a search for Arab-Moslem elements such as those in Shlomo
Aharonsons Suzanne Dellal Square, Tel Aviv, which was influenced by
features borrowed from Islamic Spain, particularly Seville small citrus
trees, water channels, blue-glazed ceramics. Similar elements can be
found in Beit Shmuel in Jerusalems Hebrew Union College, designed by
Moshe Safdie.
The majority of architects seeking to incorporate eastern features in
their buildings turned to the distant Islam of the far west, in Spain,
rather than to more local Arab building.
A serious attempt to come to grips with the local building tradition is
apparent in the Supreme Court Building in Jerusalem, designed by Ram
Karmi and Ada Karmi-Melamede and opened in 1992. It makes rich and
wide-ranging references to the whole lexicon of Eretz-Israel building
over the centuries, starting with Herodian structures, through the
Hellenistic tomb of Absalom, the Crusaders, Greek Orthodox monasteries,
and up to the British Mandate period. This outpouring is organized in a
complex, almost baroque structure, built out of contrasts light-shade,
narrow-wide, open-closed, stone-plaster, straight-round, and a profusion
of existential experiences.
Is there in all this the crystallization of an "Israeli style of
architecture"? Over the years, clear evidence of a national style has
emerged. It is beholden to modern building, sensitive to changing
fashions and styles in the world, and flows from the economic,
technological, cultural and political pressures within the country.
Building technologies with concrete were quickly absorbed in the 1920s
when the sector had to adjust to the lack of skilled building workers
and the absence of an industrial infrastructure. Apart from Karl Rubins
Beit Hadar in Tel Aviv in the 1930s, building with metal, which hardly
existed in Israel, has come to the fore only recently.
Eretz-Israel was built by its Jewish citizens as a European outpost
within the hostile Arab Orient. Even when, as recently, it engages in a
dialogue with the local tradition, it remains conscious of western
qualities and its ties to European and American architecture.
The majority of Israeli building is still clearly extra-contextual, as
exemplified by the many shopping malls built in the last decade. The
mall is a bubble of dream and fantasy, cut off from the city and the
street, creating a type of "American" territory cut off from the
climactic and cultural surroundings. An artificial micro-climate
pervades the large interiors; McDonalds and Pizza Hut feed the hungry;
bright, artificial lighting illumines the shops, and everything reeks of
prosperity and universal consumerism, isolated from Israeli realities
and the fading neighbourhood buildings on the other side of the walls.
Many recently-built tall office buildings also take their exteriors and
interiors from another, alien world. If once yearnings were directed to
Odessa, today Israel styles itself after Manhattan and Los Angeles.
Massive curtain walls of dark glass conceal transparent elevators, and
elegant carpets and art deco furniture pervade every corner.
One building that is encouraging is the sanatorium of the Mivtachim
Health Insurance Company in Zikhron Yaakov, for which the designer
Yaakov Rechter won the Israel Prize. The building is complex and clever,
and reveals a profound sensitivity to the landscape and layout of the
land. It follows the soft lines of the topography of the mountain and
slope and is open along its entire length to a scenery of sea and
valley.
During the past two decades, awareness of conservation and restoration
has been on the rise, in contrast to the bulldozer solutions, which
typified the 1970s when, in order to exploit the economic potential of
urban real estate, entire areas were threatened with destruction. One
such example was the plan to destroy the entire areas in Jerusalem of
Nahlaot and Mahaneh Yehuda and erect skyscrapers in their stead (the
Clal Building and the City Tower in the centre of the city are two
reminders of this plan).
The needs of a modern city for fast, wide roads and the need to utilise
expensive land in the most economic way threaten the short-lived
tradition of building in Israel. Public awareness of conservation leads
municipalities, Tel Aviv, for example, to offer initiators of projects
building ratios much higher than usual on condition that they invest in
the preservation of a historical building. Thus Rothschild Boulevard has
been transformed into a collection of skyscrapers of between 20 and 25
storeys. Although these have revitalized the old city centre, which had
an acute shortage of office space, it has completely wrecked the
intimate proportions that existed in the past and destroyed the
relationship between the height and breadth of the road and between
people and house sizes.
Such economic strategies created some strange phenomena, so that behind
the wall of an original two- or three-storey building, there sprang up a
massive glass-covered structure. Though the original building was
preserved, it was swallowed up by a new and alien context.
Despite this, the mere awareness of the treasures of the past is
important. In 1994, a Bauhaus conference took place in Tel Aviv, which
brought to public attention the achievements behind Tel Aviv buildings
of the 1930s.
Many buildings have been restored and renovated and have escaped the
destruction that awaited them. People like Nitza Smoke, who is
responsible for conservation in the Tel Aviv Municipality, and David
Kroyanker, who does so much to bring architectural issues into the
limelight in Jerusalem, are at the forefront of this battle.
The massive wave of building in recent years, stemming mainly from the
need to house the new immigrants from the former Soviet Union,
threatens, as in every place in the world, the destruction of green
spaces and the construction of megalopolises along the entire coastal
plain. Endless tracts of agricultural land have been designated for
building purposes, and many neighbourhoods of red-roofed homes of three
or four levels on the seacoast and in the hilly land of Judea have
sprung up.
Just as in the beginning, the Israeli still sees the red roof as a
status symbol. This phenomenon brings in its wake large and boring
commuter towns and increased pressure on the roads. The speculative
economic pressures and the freeing of agricultural land for the sake of
residential building threaten to turn Israel into one of the most
crowded countries in the world, destroying almost any open land and
eliminating the delicate balance between built-up and rural areas.
The historic yearning to build as much and as fast as possible threatens
to turn this small country into a concentration of malls, office
buildings, red-roofed cottages, residential high-rises, motorways and
paved car parks, and to destroy the specific qualities achieved by a
century of Israeli building.
(Translated by Mordechai Beck)
Ran Shechori, born in 1936 in Tel Aviv, was art critic for Haaretz and
has published essays on art and architecture in various magazines. He
was director of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, from
1980-1991. He is chairman of the Department of Plastic Arts of the
Israel Public Council for Arts and Culture.
"Ariadne" <ari...@mac.hush.com> wrote in message
news:1130374022.7...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
|
Ariadne
Thank you, Riain, that's great.
I remember some buildings I saw in photographs and
on television. I also found a site called Sustainable
Jerusalem which reminded me of things Albert and Quant
used to say.
Deborah Sharavi
>>>Great sites. I was wondering if anyone knew of any sites
>>>dealing with modern architecture in Israel.
>>Architecture or archaeology?
Ariadne wrote:
>Architecture. Sorry, it is off-topic.
Not at all! In fact, architecture in Israel, whether modern or
otherwise, is entirely ON topic -- much more so than the drivel posted
by the ignorant antisemitic contingent.
Riain answered that, I think.
Deborah
ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton
part of culture.
"Deborah Sharavi" <dsha...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130445882....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Deborah Sharavi
>Aye, it is more on-topic than most other things posted here, as it is
>part of culture.
Most definitely. And of that we need quite a bit.
There's also:
http://www.archijob.co.il/#english
Bahaus in Tel Aviv
http://www.interart.co.il/bauhaus/
The Vernacular Paradox in Israeli Architecture
(photos at exhibit sites)
http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA%20Publications/Photo%20Exhibits/Encounters-%20The%20Vernacular%20Paradox%20of%20Israeli%20Arch
But hark! Is that an ISLAND KITCHEN I espy at....
http://www.aiq.co.il/pages/bigpic3.asp?id=53
....????? Arrrrgggghhhh.....
Deborah
Ariadne
Deborah Sharavi wrote:
> øéòéï áøúåïý/Riain Barton wrote:
> >Aye, it is more on-topic than most other things posted here, as it is
> >part of culture.
>
> Most definitely. And of that we need quite a bit.
>
> There's also:
> http://www.archijob.co.il/#english
>
> Bahaus in Tel Aviv
> http://www.interart.co.il/bauhaus/
>
> The Vernacular Paradox in Israeli Architecture
> (photos at exhibit sites)
> http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA%20Publications/Photo%20Exhibits/Encounters-%20The%20Vernacular%20Paradox%20of%20Israeli%20Arch
>
> But hark! Is that an ISLAND KITCHEN I espy at....
> http://www.aiq.co.il/pages/bigpic3.asp?id=53
> ....????? Arrrrgggghhhh.....
>
> Deborah
>
Thank you for these, Deborah.
A couple more:
http://english.golan.org.il/ts.exe?tsurl=0.179.0.0&tsstmplt=picture
A little architecture
http://english.golan.org.il/bin/0-14-2470/4-0.jpg
Deborah Sharavi
> > >Aye, it is more on-topic than most other things posted here, as it is
> > >part of culture.
> > Most definitely. And of that we need quite a bit.
> > There's also:
> > http://www.archijob.co.il/#english
> > Bahaus in Tel Aviv
> > http://www.interart.co.il/bauhaus/
> > The Vernacular Paradox in Israeli Architecture
> > (photos at exhibit sites)
> > http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA%20Publications/Photo%20Exhibits/Encounters-%20The%20Vernacular%20Paradox%20of%20Israeli%20Arch
> > But hark! Is that an ISLAND KITCHEN I espy at....
> > http://www.aiq.co.il/pages/bigpic3.asp?id=53
> > ....????? Arrrrgggghhhh.....
> > Deborah
Ariadne wrote:
> Thank you for these, Deborah.
> A couple more:
> http://english.golan.org.il/ts.exe?tsurl=0.179.0.0&tsstmplt=picture
Gorgeous!
> A little architecture
> http://english.golan.org.il/bin/0-14-2470/4-0.jpg
Wow, Munchkinland.
Deborah