Papers by Tzafrir Fainholtz
Architectural Theory Review, Apr 12, 2023
This article explores the untold story of Levantine architects who were active in Tel Aviv of the... more This article explores the untold story of Levantine architects who were active in Tel Aviv of the 1930s and 1940s, following the trajectories of cousins Zaky and Robert (Hillel) Chelouche and their contemporaries. Members of Palestine's French speaking Sephardic-Mizrachi elite, these architects went to study in Paris at a time when French modernist architecture and urban planning was applied to France's colonial project, and brought back with them to Tel Aviv architectural ideas which helped shape the city as a Mediterranean modern town, similar to other cities of the period, such as Casablanca. The contribution of these Levantine gentleman-architects to Tel Aviv's celebrated architectural heritage has been largely overlooked by the prevailing narrative of the city as a "Bauhaus city," of central European modernism. This article is challenging this narrative by presenting the important work and impact of these architects, and their clients, in the city, proposing a new understanding of the heritage of the so called "White City.
Architectural Theory Review
The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 2017
Nicht nur Bauhaus – Netzwerke der Moderne in Mitteleuropa / Not Just Bauhaus – Networks of Modernity in Central Europe, 2021
SHS Web of Conferences
At the Paris International Exhibition of 1937, a few steps from the Nazi Germany and USSR pavilio... more At the Paris International Exhibition of 1937, a few steps from the Nazi Germany and USSR pavilions the Yishuv (Palestine's Jewish Zionist community) had its own presence, the “Israel in Palestine” pavilion. Initiated by the Zionist leadership, the pavilion was a hybrid construct of modernist and traditional architecture; its front was made from concrete and glass, its rear modelled on Palestine's rural vernacular architecture, with arches and terraces. Inside the pavilion, the exhibition depicted the achievements of the Zionist Jewish resettlement project, presenting it as a solution for the so-called “Jewish question”. Conceived as part of an orchestrated effort by the Zionist movement to use the World Fair, the professional architectural media, writers, and architects to gain support for the movement's activities, the pavilion sought to present Palestine's settler society as both modern and well rooted, and to display the renaissance of nationhood through the repr...
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Papers by Tzafrir Fainholtz