What is the origin and significance of Tel Aviv’s nickname, Bauhaus or “The White City”?
The first houses in Tel Aviv were eclectic in style; the detached houses reflecting the people’s desire to retain the style of life and building familiar to the immigrants’ cities in Europe. As the city developed, the architecture portrayed the vacillation between the old homelands and the new home. The town saw itself as being modern and began to feel at ease with the modern architecture of the Bauhaus, or the International Style. Contrasting with the eclecticism of the 1920s, the new architecture, which began in 1934 with Ze’ev Rechter’s Engel House on Rothschild Boulevard, showed a relaxed uniformity. The style of the “New Building” inspired by the Bauhaus-built structures, created between 1930 and 1939, was a result of immigration from Germany and Austria. In the early 1980s Micha Levin created an exhibition about “The White City” for the Tel Aviv Museum, which began to focus attention on this remarkable architectural legacy—a legacy of thousands of buildings, which make this city
