Between East and West: immigrants, critical regionalism and public housing

Abstract

The architecture of an immigrant society is characterised by problems of identity. The lack of a long continuous connection between the builders and the land where the construction takes place severs the natural identity between the planning and construction tradition and the builders. Concepts such as ‘local planning and construction tradition’ or ‘adapting construction to the conditions and natural qualities of the land’ are not defined where immigrant architecture is concerned. The State of Israel was built by Jews who immigrated to it from all over the world. The problem of the lack of a local constructing tradition, common to the entire immigrant population, was magnified many times over in Jewish construction in Israel. Israel being an immigrant country, the European origin of most of the early Jewish immigrants, and the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinians – all contributed to intensifying the problem of creating the ‘place’. This paper examines public housing construction in Israel and its relationship to the ‘place’. Following the Introduction, which reviews the question of the essence of the place in an immigrant society, the paper covers pre-State construction and Jewish-ideological planning, focusing on urban and neighbourhood planning during the first decade of the State of Israel (1948–1958). Planning was first evidenced in the town of Be’er Sheva – a desert town referred to in the bible as the City of Abraham. The town was rebuilt during the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century and later by the Israeli authorities. In examining Be’er Sheva’s urban and neighbourhood planning, the following questions may be studied: What is the relationship between ‘ideological’ planning and the population that ‘lives’ with the planning? What is the relationship between the planning and the physical conditions of the place? In effect, the issue of critical regionalism is examined.