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Beyond Cement and Iron

Contextualizing Israeli Architecture in Africa

My focus on construction and planning is not incidental. These fields played a crucial role in space-shaping processes during the first decades of the Israeli state, as well as in the construction of the territorial identity of its new citizens. Simultaneously, during the 1960s, the modernist construction projects undertaken in African countries post-independence were also evidence of a desire amongst newly independent African nations for postcolonial national unity.

Master plan of Abidjan, in: The African Riviera Brochure.

Introduction

Front page of the Afrique Nouvelle newspaper reporting on Golda Meir's visit.

At the opening of the Knesset's spring session on May 1963, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion devoted much of his speech to the significance of Israel as a “development expert.”1 This speech encapsulates the political dimension and the ideological mission of Israel's participation in development, planning and architecture projects in the developing world, including Asia, Latin America, Iran and, in particular, Africa. Beginning in 1957, once domestic security conditions and Israel’s international recognition had been stabilized, many African leaders visited Israel. Such visits were considered successes on all sides and expressions of satisfaction were echoed by African leaders as stated, for example, by President Modibo Keita of the Republic of Mali:

“Israel is becoming an object of pilgrimage for African peoples who seek inspiration on how to build their own countries. Israel has become (suggested) a human approach to building a new society of 20 million Africans.”2

Indeed, Keita’s fascination with Israel’s experience of constructing a nation and a territory highlights the main theme to be discussed in this article, namely Israel’s involvement (1956–1973) in architecture and planning in Africa. This discussion is based on my professional research3 and on the ISPADA (Israeli Planning, Architecture and Development in Africa) digital archive.

Subsequently, and highly relevant to the present subject, those elements that were perceived as constituting a successful development project—aesthetically, socially and in terms of territorialization—were reproduced as an ingredient of Israel’s foreign policy. Meir Vardy, an Israeli diplomat who wrote of the important role played by cultural exchange in Israel’s foreign policy, emphasized the the planning and architectural projects of Israeli architects in Africa.4

The Israeli government saw the decolonization of Africa as an opportunity and wished “to expand its geographical and demographic size by having international recognition,” and “to revive the notion that ‘out of Zion shall go forth the law.’”5 In 1958, Foreign Minister Golda Meir visited Ghana, where she participated in a special session at the convention of the first All-African Peoples’ conference, receiving a warm welcome from the leaders of Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Senegal.6 Meir was one of the key politicians to encourage Israel’s involvement in Africa, aiming to construct the common fate of both Jews and Africans as de-colonized nations:

“(T)o the black states-in-the-making there was a great deal that Israel could and wanted to give. Like them, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land… Independence had come to us, as it was coming to Africa, not served up on a silver platter but after years of struggle… We couldn’t offer Africa money or arms, but on the other hand we were free of the taint of the colonial exploiters because all that we wanted from Africa was friendship.”7

This statement did not occur in a vacuum; Israel had constructed its own national identity as one among the recently de-colonized nations which had struggled against colonialism in order to achieve independence;8 a discourse that was also prominent in speeches by African leaders.9

Creating New Identities: Israel’s Development Programs in Africa

African leaders of the time were fascinated by Israel’s development. As noted by the President of the Central African Community David Dacko: “… the development of Israel was rapid, towns were built in three years only … thanks to the known Master Plan … adapted to the historical and political conditions of this country.”10 Dacko’s reference to the “known Master Plan” was, in fact, an allusion to the founding national plan developed by architect Arieh Sharon, head of the Planning Division of the Prime Minister’s department. It reflected the centralized statehood that characterized the Israeli regime of the 1950s. Although deeply involved in the design of hundreds of public buildings, including housing projects, hospitals and university buildings,11 Sharon was best known for his role in shaping the Israeli territory and “planning a new land.”12

Arieh Sharon’s Kibbutz+Bauhaus book cover.

Sharon immigrated to Palestine in 1920, and began his professional career as a European architect before the Second World War. A modernist architect by education—graduating from the Bauhaus in 1929—for a time he worked for his teacher Hannes Meyer, who succeeded Gropius as the head of the Bauhaus, even accompanying Meyer to work in the Soviet Union, where, he would say later, Le Corbusier’s ideas about planning received a more welcoming reception. Sharon's plan was thus heavily influenced by European ideas13 defining the three principles of development—land, people and time14—which facilitated the formation of the colonial geography of Israel. The plan included the construction of 30 new towns and about 400 new agrarian settlements, designed to replace a similar number of Palestinian villages and towns that were either destructed or “emptied” from their inhabitants that were expelled and became refugees. The plan aspired to provide housing for a Jewish population which had doubled during the first decade of the state. It enabled the construction of a new place and a new identity in a land that was being intentionally constructed as a “decolonized territory” in order to justify Zionist project, with the mission of transforming émigrés into “Israelis” through a process of modernization and Israelization.15 Sharon's professional experience, alongside his close relationship with David Ben Gurion and the other Israeli leaders advocating for a close relationship between Israel and the new African states, paved the way for his involvement in developing countries. Sharon's major project in Africa was in Nigeria, especially the planning and design of Ife University in southwestern Nigeria, which he saw as “the most important challenge” he faced.16 According to Sharon, Nigerian leaders were impressed by the Israeli university campuses he had previously designed, and found their scale more appropriate than European or American models. They invited Sharon, in partnership with his son Eldar Sharon and in collaboration with Harold Rubin, to take on this large-scale project. Designed and constructed between1960 to 1978, work on the university began with a regional survey where 16 towns were studied in order to determine the most suitable location for the future university.

The Ife campus. 

What in Sharon's attitude toward architecture most attracted African leaders? Let me suggest that his methodology, rooted in modernist planning on the one hand and a regionalist vision on the other, was crucial to the successful “exporting” of his design experience to Africa. The regional survey found what “seemed to be the most appropriate site (for the university), considering the basic development factors and the existing services of water supply, electricity and tele-communication.” As part of his visit and in attempt to adapt his architecture within the given context, Sharon also documented the everyday life of the area’s local population.

The survey posed an initial dilemma to the Ife University Master Plan in that a question immediately arose regarding whether the campus should be centralized or dispersed. The final decision, similar to his approach in Israel, was that “the campus proper should be as compact as the climatic conditions allowed, while the residential quarters could be situated at some distance from the campus, [with] the students’ quarters within bicycle distance, and the staff quarters in motoring distance."17

Zalman Enav with his Ethiopian partner Mikael Tedros on the cover of The national Geographic special issue “Ethiopian Adventure”. April 1965. OR Zalman Enav and the Ethiopian Cesar Haile Selassie in front of a model of the Foreign Ministry Building, Zalman Enav archive.

Sharon’s preparation for the design of the Ife Campus also included visiting some buildings recently designed by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto and Josep Lluís Sert for Harvard and the MIT complex. And indeed, the influence of these Modernist architects is evident in the Ife project, such as the Faculty of Humanities (1962), the Halls of Residence (1964), the Library (1966), the Institute of Education (1970) and the Assembly Hall (1970). The rationale behind Sharon’s modernist mission in Africa is clearly expressed in a conference paper he gave in New York, where he explained:

“The urgent need for systematic and planned development in these (developing) countries is obvious. The greatest difficulty is to evolve a systematic approach and sound solution, which will bridge the deep chasm between the immense needs on the one hand and the insufficient means of financial support, manpower and human understanding, on the other.”18

This view, however, must be contextualized by referring to Sharon’s role in “planning a new land”—a project providing a lucid example of the colonial agenda that architecture and planning can serve. This includes not just a technical understanding of planning but also its moral meaning. As I have shown, Sharon's modernist roots combined with a desire for localism as a tool to construct a unified national identity also formulated the relevant principles he applied to the African context.

Tropical Architecture: From Israel to Africa

Zalman Enav’s involvement in Ethiopia illustrates a different direction through which architectural knowledge is transferred, reproduced and implemented, as he indicated in an interview with the author from 2009:

“In 1956 I graduated from the Technion and I left for the U.K. There I discovered the post-graduate programme at the AA (the Architects Association school of Architecture) in Tropical Architecture… It was a special programme with architects from the Third World, which at that time were called underdeveloped countries. … I specialized in architecture for humid climates and worked in an architects’ studio where I designed a school in Lagos.”19

In this case the flow of knowledge began in Israel and then moved to Britain, where the study of “Tropical Architecture” was established in the metropolitan circles of the 1950s. This was achieved through the dissemination of the term in books and journals, a conference and a course of professional specialization (the Architectural Association School of Architecture’s Department of Tropical Architecture)—an acknowledgment of the opinion voiced by foreign students that absences existed within the period’s architectural pedagogy.20 It is important to contextualize tropical architecture within a broader set of practices and forms of knowledge production, including medicine and hygiene, areas which constructed “the Tropics” in the eyes of the Europeans.21

Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Addis Ababa, Zvi Efrat Archive.

Thus equipped with new ideas about architecture, in 1959 Enav embarked for Ethiopia, where his two brothers had started a factory in partnership with the authorities. According to Enav, his first design in Ethiopia was a housing project; a commission which formed the basis for his decision to open an architecture firm in partnership with Mikael Tedros, an Ethiopian architect. As detailed in a special issue of the National Geographic Journal, the partnership was fruitful. Enav and his partner worked on many projects, including the H.S.I. University Classroom Building, the Mapping and Geography Institute, and the apartment building for Her Imperial Majesty and a hospital extension, also in Addis Ababa.

Though the firm’s “close relations” with Emperor Haile Selassie were key to securing these commissions, Enav was also involved in designing speculative rental housing, as well as low-cost housing projects and schools for rural areas. For the latter he developed a planning manual he still regards as a reflection of his social responsibility as an architect.

In the spirit of the AA’s Department of Tropical Architecture, Enav's fascination with the aesthetic of labor-intensive architecture was expressed in three large-scale public buildings. The first is the university building in Addis Ababa, whose façade was covered by locally produced red granolith cladding. Another impressive project, notable for its scale and technological innovation, is the Filwoha Hotel and Baths complex (“that was the largest one in the world at that time”), built using pre-fabricated concrete units. The third building is the headquarters for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Addis Abba:

“The prime minister asked me to design a building similar to the UN building in New York … I told him that it was out of the question, since I wanted to design an ‘Ethiopian’ building. But he insisted, telling me, ‘we want to be Modern’ … I finally designed a large model and I took it to the Cesar who asked me: ‘Why it is not built with glass?’ I answered him: ‘Don't you see? The façade is made of units that resemble the star of Solomon, the Ethiopian symbol…’ Only then was he convinced by my idea.”22

Hotel Ivoire, Abidjan, Zvi Efrat Archive.

By the end of the 1960s, Israel’s involvement with Africa was in crisis. Though a detailed discussion of the reasons for this difficulty is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note that wider geopolitical developments played a crucial role in Israeli-African dynamics. Although Israel’s involvement with African states continued after the Six-Day War and subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, its presence in the region nevertheless encountered serious political difficulties.23 The outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War forced many African leaders to choose between their commitment to the Arab world, on the one hand, and their political ties to Israel on the other. The outcome was that many African states chose to sever diplomatic relations with Israel: only a few African countries with well-established ties to France and the United States maintained contact with Israel, and these contacts were often informal.24

Zalman Enav returned to Israel in this period, though he continued his professional involvements in Kenya, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda. Upon his return to Israel, Enav imported his professional experience—rooted in the colonial British tradition—back to his home country. To be precise: Enav contributed his planning expertise to Israel’s colonization efforts in the Occupied Territories.

From Africa to Israel

The work of Thomas Leitersdorf, one of present-day Israel's leading planners, in the Ivory Coast clearly illustrates the significant association of private entrepreneurship to both transnational relations and the Israeli authorities. Like Enav, Leitersdorf was educated at the AA. He then went on to work with the architect Bill Perera on town-planning projects and tourist developments in the United States. Later, he became involved in planning the city of Abidjan, thanks to a family connection with the Mayer Brothers, Israeli developers who operated on an international scale.

The Mayer brother’s entrepreneurial activities in Africa began in 1959, when they became involved in constructing several dozen buildings across the continent.25 The Mayers’ investment in Africa was linked to the development of Israeli foreign policy, with the Israeli state even providing financial guarantees for the brother’s projects, including direct financing for the company. Part of the “deal” between the Israeli government and the Mayer brothers involved the export of materials as well as construction industry professionals from Israel to Africa.26 Indeed, Africa was attractive for those who managed to develop close links with African leaders:

“(Shay) Mayer, as a businessman, decided that there was a future in Africa, exactly at the time that others were afraid to go to Africa. He went there, and despite the language difficulties, a friendship developed between him and Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the President of the Ivory Coast. … The President was interested in architecture. … He had a vision and knew exactly what his new state demanded."27

Hotel Ivoire, Abidjan plans, Zvi Efrat Archive. 

Houphouet-Boigny had assumed that attracting developers from abroad would help the economic progress of his country and thus gifted 1000 dunams to the Mayer’s in Cocody, at the outskirts of Abidjan. The Mayer’s started with the design and construction of Hotel Ivoire, as part of a so-called African Riviera in Abidjan.

The hotel was a grandiose project that included an ice skating rink, a casino and congress hall, while in the garden several swimming pools were designed as pavilions resembling African huts. The heavily decorated public halls were outfitted with “impressive chandeliers and an Italian plaster ceiling painted red.”28 The design of Hotel Ivoire and the tourist attractions around it were not targeted to the local population but rather towards Europeans; Mosheh Mayer envisioned the place as an attraction “like the Salzburg Festival in Austria” as well as a site for “Olympic Games” and “water games and walking beside elephants.”29 The opening event of Hotel Ivoire indicates the significance of the hotel as a symbol of cosmopolitism in the eyes of the Mayer’s:

“The celebration continued for two days, with the participation of hundreds of guests from abroad and from Abidjan. … (A)t this occasion the Mayer Brothers received from Felix Houphouet-Boigny … the honorary medal of the Grand Officier de l'Ordre National.”30

High rise building in Abidjan. Architect Lietrsdorf, in: The Israeli Architects and Engineers Journal, No. 14, 1955.

The successful construction of the hotel led the President to invite the Mayer’s to develop the entire “African Riviera.” They hired architect Bill Perera, who invited Leitersdorf to work with him on this project. The Abidjan master plan had to incorporate a new planned city serving European expatriate communities and tourists while also taking into consideration the needs of the local African villagers in the area. The project area was designated as a tourist destination and dispersal center, integrated with a garden city for 200,000 inhabitants. During his ten years working in the Ivory Coast, Leitersdorf was also involved in other tourism and housing projects under the umbrella of the Mayer’s.

For Leitersdorf, Abidjan was a laboratory for large-scale planning—undertaken within the context of an autocratic ruler, and serving the interests of Europeans—and his experience there informed his involvement in the next “planning boom” in the Isaeli occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. The Abidjan “French Riviera” master plan, I would argue, served as a laboratory for this undertaking, the experimental results of which were later verified and implemented in Israel, when Leitersdorf planned settlements in the occupied territories in general, and Ma'ale Adumim, located approximately eight kilometers south of East Jerusalem, in particular. Much like the Abidjan master plan, which was supposed to accommodate the post-colonial “African village,” to some degree the “Palestinian village” became a still life in the Israeli-colonial context, a source of inspiration that—following the tropical architecture program, though in a different geographical context and subordinated to Israel’s regionalist and nationalistic discourse—became an object of Orientalist desire:

"The beauty of an Arab village is due to the duration of construction. You see generations of construction that slowly developed, and the development was not always rational … It started with a donkey trail. Someone built a house, and then he had a son. The son grew up and got married, so they had to add some space for him, which was constructed at the expense of the street, since the donkey still had enough room to pass. Then came the cars, but there was no room at all for them, and so it evolved … In actuality, what is an Arab village? They have no D9 or D10 (bulldozers). They build on the hill the way ants do …"31

Concluding Words

In conclusion, throughout this article I have presented a wide range of architectural development projects, revealing the affinity that existed between Africa and Israel and Israel and Africa up to the late 1960s. First there was the work of Arieh Sharon, which was foundational to the architectural vision and planning institutions that formed the territorial thesis of the new nation-state, facilitating the geographical “whitening” of Israel through modernization and Judaization. Sharon's involvement in Africa re-confirmed this comprehensive, rational planning methodology. It pretended to be neutral and reliant on climatic observations and regional surveys while at the same time serving as a modernist planning/architecture manifesto, wherein planning and development was viewed as the key to modernization. Zalman Enav's prolific work, founded upon precepts learned at the AA’s Department of Tropical Architecture—itself a product of colonial history—indicates another migration route of architectural knowledge which traveled from the core of London to Ethiopia, and from there to 1970s Israel, where colonial development projects initiated in the West Bank provided yet another opportunity to define the link between architecture and “locality.” Thomas Leitersdorf's work also reinforces this association. His search for “locality” in the Occupied Territories, an attempt to prove a native connection to place, was based on his experiments in the African laboratory, in which the native’s affiliation to territory was deemed unquestionable.

●Footnotes
  • 1 David Ben-Gurion: “Statement to the Knesset by Prime Minister.” (6 May 1963): Vol. 1–2: 1947–1974 available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il (Hebrew). (Accessed in 2012)
  • 2 Modibo Keita (president of the Republic of Mali): Israel-Africa: A story of Cooperation. Page number not indicated.
  • 3 Haim Yacobi: Israel and Africa: A genealogy of moral geography. Routledge, London 2015.
  • 4 Ariel: A Review of the Arts and Sciences in Israel (5), Spring 1963. Jerusalem: Cultural Relations Department, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
  • 5 ISA: HZ\945\2: “Israel-Africa memorandum” (Dec. 1960). Israel Defense Force Archive (hereafter IDFA) IDFA 1671\92\22, ’Acts of aid of the IDF and the Ministry of Defense to foreign countries’ (27 October 1964).
  • 6 IDFA (Israeli Defense Force Archive): 176\92\110, “Collection of Newspapers Reports.”
  • 7 Golda Meir: My Life. Futura Publications, London 1976, p. 264. (emphasis added)
  • 8 Reuven Bareket: “Opening Lecture of Cooperation.” In: Hanan S. Aynor und No’am Kaminer (eds.): The Role of the Israel Labour Movement in Establishing Relations with States in Africa and Asia – Documents. The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1989 (1958), pp. 2–3 (Hebrew).
  • 9 “Press Conference of the President of the Central African Community, Mr. David Dacko”: IDFA 1508\93\291 (June 1962).
  • 10 “Press conference of the President of the Central African Community, Mr. David Dacko.”  IDFA 1508\93\291, (June 1962). See also: “Mission d’experts Israeliens a Brazaville.” Afrique Nouvelle, 18 January 1961 (note 35).
  • 11 “These projects were done in partnership with architect B. Idelson. For further details see: Arieh Sharon: Kibbutz + Bauhaus: an architect’s way in a new land (Chapter 6), Karl Krämer Verlag, Stuttgart and Massada 1976; and Reuven Bareket: “Opening Lecture of the International Cooperation Conference,” pp. 2–3.  In: The Role of the Israel Labour Movement in Establishing Relations with States in Africa and Asia – Document, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1958 (reprinted 1989).
  • 12 “Arieh Sharon: Physical Planning in Israel. Government Printing Office, Tel-Aviv 1951 (Hebrew).
  • 13 S. Ilan Troen: Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement. Yale University Press, New Haven 2003; Zvi Efrat: The Israeli Project: Building and Architecture 1948-1973. Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv 2004. (Hebrew).
  • 14 Arieh Sharon: Kibbutz + Bauhaus 1976: chapter 5.
  • 15 Haim Yacobi, ‘Architecture, Orientalism and Identity: a Critical Analysis of the Israeli Built Environment’, Israel Studies 13/1 (2008), pp. 94–118.
  • 16 Sharon: Kibbutz + Bauhaus. p. 126.
  • 17 Sharon: Kibbutz + Bauhaus. p. 140.
  • 18 Archive of Smadar Sharon: “Planning and Building of System Hospitals in View of Building Techniques and Climatic Factors.” Presentation by Arieh Sharon, Nairobi 1971. No page indicated.
  • 19 All citations from Zalman Enav in this section are taken from an interview with the author, 10 February 2009.
  • 20 Hannah Le Roux: “The networks of tropical architecture.” In: The Journal of Architecture, 8:3 (2003), pp. 337–354.
  • 21 Kay Anderson, Mona Domosh, Steve Pile & Nigel Thrift: Handbook of Cultural Geography. Sage Publications Ltd., London 2003.
  • 22 An interview with Zalman Enav, 10 Feb. 2009.
  • 23 Susan Aurelia Gitelson: Israel's African Setback in Perspective. The Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1974, p. 9.
  • 24 For a detailed analysis of the relations between Israel and Africa after 1973 see: Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin, 1988. The Israeli Connection. London: I.B. Tauris and Co., pp. 72–75.
  • 25 Shay Mayer: The Story of the Mayer Brothers. Kavim, Tel Aviv 2009, p. 98.
  • 26 Ibid, p. 144.
  • 27 Quotations of Architect Thomas Leitersdorf in this section are taken from an interview conducted on 4 March 2009.
  • 28 Mayer: The Story of the Mayer Brothers, p. 143.
  • 29 quoted in Mayer: The Story of the Mayer Brothers, p. 127.
  • 30 Mayer: The Story of the Mayer Brothers, p. 137.
  • 31 Eran Tamir-Tawil: “To Start a City from Scratch,” pp. 151–161. In: Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman (eds.): A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture. Verso, New York 2003.
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●Translation
The Moscow Bauhaus Exhibition Catalogue (1931)

When Hannes Meyer had emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1930, one of the first things he did was organizing an exhibition about “his” Bauhaus. As early as in February 1931 Meyer had the exhibition Bauhaus Dessau. Period of Hannes Meyer’s directorship. 1928-1930 already ready to receive the Moscow public. It was shown at the renown State Museum of New Western Art. This is the first English translation of the exhibition catalogue. → more

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After the Ball — Hannes Meyer Presenting the Bauhaus in Moscow

Hannes Meyer arrived in the USSR just a couple of months after being dismissed from his position as Bauhaus director in October 1930. These months were filled with attempts by Meyer and his supporters to protest this decision through all possible means: media campaigns, open letters, student demonstration and court trials. After arriving in Moscow, Meyer carried on the fight against his unfair dismissal. → more

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From Recognition to Rejection — Hannes Meyer and the Reception of the Bauhaus in the Soviet Union

The history of the Stalinist critique of the Bauhaus and Hannes Meyer has two chapters. The first chapter spans the time from 1929 to the Architects’ Congress in the Soviet Union in 1937; the second consists in the condemnation of the Bauhaus in the GDR that took place on the trip by East German architects to Moscow in spring of 1950. This text tells the story of the first chapter. → more

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Meyer’s Russia, or the Land that Never Was

It is quite hard to know where to start with Hannes Meyer in Moscow. It’s hard because, while there is plenty of documentation on him and his team in the Bauhaus Brigade—as well as other Western designers and architects (of these, Ernst May is at least as significant as Meyer, as is the Dutch designer Mart Stam, and each went on to produce more substantial work than Meyer after their respective Russian episodes)—the legacy of his work there presents certain difficulties in evaluating. → more

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Moving Away to the Other End of the World — Reflections on the Letters Between Tibor Weiner and Hannes Meyer from the DAM Archive

This article examines the correspondence between a teacher (Hannes Meyer) and his former student (Tibor Weiner), who met at the Bauhaus in Dessau, going on to live for a period in the Soviet Union. Each migrated to Latin America shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, and returned to Europe in the late 1940s. The surviving letters between Meyer and Weiner, preserved in the DAM Archive in Frankfurt am Main, are not only a testimony of comradeship but also a window into some key moments in the first half of the twentieth century. → more

●Artists Work
Bauhaus in Russia — Haunted Houses

The following material was produced during the photographic workshop Bauhaus in Russia: Haunted houses, which took place in the framework of the exhibition bauhaus imaginista. Moving Away: The Internationalist Architect at the museum of contemporary art Garage in Moscow. Through an open-call we invited participants from several Russian cities to take part in the visual research on both the visible and invisible legacies of the “bauhauslers”. → more

●Artist Work
To Philipp Tolziner

For the exhibition bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away. The Internationalist Architect at Garage Contemporary Museum of Art, the contemporary artist Alice Creischer has been invited to respond to the personal archive of Bauhaus architect Philipp Tolziner. She produced reading of material relating to the architect’s socialist backgrounds and his work in the Soviet Union.  → more

●Artist Work
Sketch One: Lotte and Hermina — Script-Reading and Screening by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

The script that the artist Wendelin van Oldenborgh created for bauhaus imaginista: Moving Away. The Internationalist Architect as a public moment is an insight into the development of her larger film project which will premiere as a contribution to the bauhaus imaginista exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, March 2019. It features archive material around the personas Lotte Beese and Hannes Meyer, Hermine Huiswoud and Langston Hughes. → more

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Hamhŭng’s Two Orphans (To Konrad Püschel) — East German Internationalism in North-Korea Emerging through a Chronopolitical Lens

Doreen Mende’s work Hamhung’s Two Orphans, which borrows its title from a chapter of the cine-essay Coréennes (1959) by Chris Marker, proposes to trace the transformation of the Bauhaus’s relevance from its prewar internationalist modernity into elements of the GDR’s socialist internationalism when architecture operated as a state-crafting instrument during the global Cold War. → more

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“All artists interlock!” — How Bauhäuslers created the “New Germany” and promoted the national economy

The Third Reich was in ruins, the surrender not yet signed. An architect painstakingly working his way through the debris to the Schöneberg town hall found a sign on the door of the building authority with his name. Appointed to office by the German Communist Party (KPD), city counselor Hans Scharoun immediately looked around for his people: “I’ve looked everywhere for you, where are you? Here we go!” → more

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The “School in the Woods” as a Socio-pedagogical Ideal — Functional Analyses and Photographs by Peterhans

The building theory classes at the Bauhaus focused on imparting a functional understanding of architecture. Building had become a science. As a result, the ADGB Trade Union School was designed logically from the inside out. Walter Peterhans’ photographs of the school images illustrate both the architect’s intentions for the building and the environmental studies conducted by Bauhaus students. → more

●Artist Work
Scenes from the Most Beautiful Campus in Africa — A Film about the Ife Campus

Zvi Efrat, 2019, film stills from the exhibition video projection, 25 min, color, sound, English.
Courtesy of the artist. → more

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The Legacy of Arieh Sharon’s Postcolonial Modernist Architecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University Campus in Ile-Ife Nigeria

The significance of Arieh Sharon’s postcolonial modernist architecture at Obafemi Awolowo University Campus at Ile-Ife is multi-dimensional. Built between 1960 and 1978, at first glance the campus core consists of an ensemble of modernist buildings. In this article Bayo Amole examines some of the physical and conceptual characteristics of the campus master plan and core area design in order to illustrate their significance as examples of postcolonial modernist architecture—identifying the most important aspects of their legacy, which has continued to guide the design of the campus as it has developed over the course of more than a half century. → more

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Bauhaus Modernism and the Nigerian Connection — The Socio-Political Context of Arieh Sharon and the University Of Ife Design

It should be considered “against the run of play” for a Bauhaus-trained Israeli architect such as Arieh Sharon to have been named designer of the post-independence University of Ife. This paper examines how developments in the socio-political context of Nigeria and international politics—including history and policies in the education sector—“constructed” Sharon’s involvement in the University of Ife design and the spread of Bauhaus modernism to tropical architecture. → more

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Nigerian Campus Design — A Juxtaposition of Traditional and Contemporary Architecture

The early to mid-twentieth century saw the International Style and modernism rapidly influence major Nigerian cities and towns, first as a result of colonialism and then independence. Discussing the architecture of two first-generation Nigerian Universities, the University of Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo University, this article builds upon the established discourse concerning how architects assimilated the International Style into the tropical climate and sociocultural context of Nigeria. → more

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Colonial Architecture in Ile-Ife

The architectural heritage credited to the colonial intervention of the British in Nigeria is a blend of features imported by Europeans accustomed to a temperate climate, mixed with adaptations derived from the principles of modern architecture and concessions to the region’s tropical climate. As such, colonial buildings of this era can be regarded as a hybrid architectural style. → more

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The New Culture School for Arts and Design — Launched in 1995

The New Culture School for Arts and Design in Ibadan, Nigeria has involved the development and construction of a space for creative people working in many different media in order to advance their professional proficiency in the fine arts, theater, music, film, photography, design, writing and more. → more

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Nation Building through Campus Architecture — Israeli Architects Arieh Sharon and Eldar Sharon’s Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Campus in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 1962–1976

The campus of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Nigeria, the first phase of which was built between 1962 and 1972, is a fascinating example of modernist architecture in Africa. As a case study of Africa’s assimilation of the modern style, its design is intriguing also due to the fact that it was built by Israeli architect Arieh Sharon (1900–1984), aided by his son, Eldar Sharon (1933–1994). → more

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Tropical Architecture / Building Skin

Like the modernist architecture that preceded it, tropical architecture was co-defined with modern bodies and the bodies of the tropics: initially those of colonizers but soon colonized bodies as well. The technologies of tropical architecture, based on a modernist rationalism adapted to tropical climatic conditions, were, in turn, offered as a developmental asset to colonized subjects, especially young people. → more

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A Hot Topic — Tropical Architecture and Its Aftermath

Both the tropical architecture discourse in general and British notions of modernism in particular were embedded in larger discussions on climatic and culturally sensitive approaches to building developed within the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne—CIAM) from the 1950s onward—notions rooted in the hygienic and medical discourses of colonial occupation. → more

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The Extension Buildings of the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau — Documents of the Formalism Debate in the GDR

The former ADGB Trade Union School is regarded today as an icon of modern architecture. Designed at the Bauhaus under the direction of Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer together with the students of architecture, the building ensemble still stands as a paragon of collective work, reform pedagogical ideas and analytic architecture. Less attention has been paid to the extensions to the school, planned 1949–51 by Georg Waterstradt. These buildings stand as a valuable testimony to the vigor of GDR architecture. The “formalism debate” led to a rejection of Bauhaus architecture, and thus, the set of political-architectural principles exemplified by the Trade Union School. → more

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Communistic Functionalist — The Anglophone Reception of Hannes Meyer

Philip Johnson described Hannes Meyer as a “communistic functionalist” whose most notable achievement was to have preceded Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as director of the Bauhaus. The position he assigned to Meyer was reinforced in the Bauhaus Exhibition of 1938 at MoMA. The particular view of the Bauhaus presented at MoMA in 1938 corresponds to the place of Meyer in the historiography of modern architecture in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. The view that Meyer’s work allegedly lacked aesthetic interest, rendering it irrelevant to an Anglophone audience. → more

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Selman Selmanagić at the Crossroads of Different Cultures — From Childhood Years in Bosnia to Bauhaus Education and Travels

Selman Selmanagić’s childhood years in Bosnia, on the eve of the First World War, as well as his education in Sarajevo, Ljubljana and at Bauhaus Dessau between the two world wars, together with his work in Palestine and Berlin, shaped his worldview and experience with different cultures and traditions. Throughout his career, he perpetually strove to find contemporary answers for the challenges of the time he was living in. → more

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The “Hungarian Bauhaus” — Sándor Bortnyik’s Bauhaus-Inspired Budapest School Műhely 1928–1938

One of the many Hungarians associated with the Bauhaus, painter and graphic designer Sándor Bortnyik (1893-1976) opened his art and design school, Műhely, in Budapest in 1928 to bring the Bauhaus’s sprit and some of its teaching methods into Hungary. Even if Bortnyik’s school did not have the scope of the Bauhaus, it was an efficient experiment in an independent form of institutionalized education in the field of modern graphic design and typography. → more

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Biology and Educational Models in the Pacific Southern Cone

The Chilean encounter with second-order cybernetics in the early 1970s was an essential part of the modernization project the state had been promoting since the 1920s, a project which also encompasses the 1945 reform of the architecture school. But if one reviews the history of this project with greater care, one can identify the reform of the new art school of 1928, which was the product of a social movement that began after the First World War, and that was able to implement in the main school of art of the country, a “first year of trial” similar to the methodology of the Bauhaus preliminary course, influenced by the trends of the “Active” or “New” school of the time. → more

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For the Faculty of Architecture at METU — Bauhaus was a Promise

“ARCH 101 Basic Design” is the title of the introductory course offered to the first-year students in the METU Faculty of Architecture (Middle East Technical University, Ankara). Since the establishment of the school, this course has been conducted with a very strong Bauhaus impact. → more

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From Social Democratic Experiment to Postwar Avant-Gardism — Asger Jorn and the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus

The project bauhaus imaginista would be negligent if it did not address the artist group referenced by its title, the Mouvement Internationale pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste (International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, or IMIB), founded in 1953 by Danish artist Asger Jorn together with a handful of French and Italian colleagues. Many of the theoretical and artistic positions advocated by the IMIB were developed dialectically in response both to the historical Bauhaus and the reconstitution of a Bauhaus-inspired pedagogical program at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Ulm. → more

●Translation
Letter from Asger Jorn to Max Bill — February 12, 1954

Asger Jorn read of Max Bill’s plans for the new Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm (HfG), a school modeled after the Bauhaus, in the British Architects’ Yearbook 1953, where Bill had placed a promotional article to attract prospective students and teachers. Excited by the possibility of participating in a new democratic pedagogical experiment and in pursuing his interest in fusing art and architecture, he wrote to Bill, inquiring about the role of art at Ulm and expressing his desire to secure a teaching position.

This is a translation of one of the letters Jorn send to Bill. → more

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