This article investigates aging-in-place among seniors who live with caretakers, particularly domestic workers who immigrate to Israel from poorer countries. In recent decades, new apartment designs are intended for families with... more
This article investigates aging-in-place among seniors who live with caretakers, particularly domestic workers who immigrate to Israel from poorer countries. In recent decades, new apartment designs are intended for families with children. Drawing on Dolores Hayden’s (1980) ‘Non-Sexist City’, we expound on Non-Ageist architecture for the aging population and migrant caregivers. We examine how this kind of residence can include additional and vulnerable groups in the population, such as seniors and their caregivers. Our study explores the design of Tel Aviv Metropolis apartments. We argue that typical apartment design affects the ethics of everyday living. Following Michel de Certeau (2011), our research observes everyday behaviors and creative tactics through which seniors and caregivers re-appropriate shared living space. Most seniors house caretakers in a room within the bedroom area of the apartment, for instance, while others use a separate room by the entrance. These practices ...
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This paper constitutes an introduction to the special journal issue on the twentieth-century architecture for children regarded as ‘citizens of the future’ by several distinct ideologies. Four papers from different geographical areas,... more
This paper constitutes an introduction to the special journal issue on the twentieth-century architecture for children regarded as ‘citizens of the future’ by several distinct ideologies. Four papers from different geographical areas, performed at different times of the twentieth century, comprise the issue and present a rich array of political projects which nonetheless shared the belief in children and childhood as the objects for education, indoctrination, and social transformation. This introduction intends to contextualise architecture of spaces for children in a historical and theoretical perspective discussing its relations with social sciences and the recent field of childhood studies.
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topic in architectural scholarship, media and education. Furthermore, with the exception of a few events (e.g. the Barcelona Olympics, the IBA Berlin, or the harbour conversions of Amsterdam and Hamburg), over these three decades, mass... more
topic in architectural scholarship, media and education. Furthermore, with the exception of a few events (e.g. the Barcelona Olympics, the IBA Berlin, or the harbour conversions of Amsterdam and Hamburg), over these three decades, mass housing projects have seldom made it to the portfolio of notable practicing architects and were rarely included in architectural publications. As Mary McLeod put it as early as 1989, 'in the 1980s most schools stopped offering regular housing studios; gentlemen's clubs, resort hotels, art museums, and vacation homes became the standard programs. Design awards and professional magazine coverage have embodied similar priorities'. 5 Even recent scholarship seems to overlook the centrality of housing for a critique of how neolib-eralism changed behavioural norms and models of subjectivation. In his The Architecture of Neoliberalism, Douglas Spencer analyses several architectural projects to assert that 'the truths shared by neoliberalism and the architecture compliant to its agenda have informed projects designed to serve as forms of environmental governmentality.' 6 Spencer uses case studies designed by prominent architects and architectural firms to put through his critique of an architecture of neoliberalism. Conspicuously, while works designed by the likes of Zaha Hadid Architects, Foreign Office Architects, Rem Koolhaas/OMA are featured in the book, not a single housing project is discussed. Spencer apparently does not consider housing a visible manifestation of the architecture of neoliberalism. The housing question Friedrich Engels's The Housing Question (1872) delivered a vital contribution to highlight the relation between adequate workers' housing provision, the prevention of social unrest and the promotion of economic prosperity. 1 With the global dissemination of the Industrial Revolution, housing rose to a prominent position in the apparatus of the capitalist mode of production. Eventually, in the interwar period, workers' housing performed a key role in the re-organisation of class relations and the city, and in shaping modernist architecture. The housing policies and design implemented during the so-called 'Red Vienna' period is a case in point. 2 Later, with the reconstruction of Europe in the aftermath of World War II, housing gained momentum as a key factor to secure the social reproduction of labour. The 'social project' of welfare state politics identified housing as one of its main pillars and attracted the engagement and creativity of talented professionals in private offices and public housing departments. 3
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This article studies Sir Patrick Geddes' housing-based urban planning, pointing to a less-explored aspect of his groundbreaking work, while proposing ways to rethink the history and theory of modern urban planning towards a "housing... more
This article studies Sir Patrick Geddes' housing-based urban planning, pointing to a less-explored aspect of his groundbreaking work, while proposing ways to rethink the history and theory of modern urban planning towards a "housing builds cities" planning agenda. Focusing on Geddes' modern urban planning for Tel Aviv in 1925 as housing-based urban-ism, this article conceives urban structure and urban housing as one single problem rather than disconnected realms of planning. Based on new findings and revised study of available sources, we look into three planning processes by which policy makers, planners, and dwellers in Tel Aviv engaged in this housing-based urban vision: (1) The city as a housing problem; (2) the city as social utility for reform and reconstruction; and (3) housing-based urbanization as self-help. We show how Geddes' modern urban plan for Tel Aviv employed the city's pressing housing needs for urban workers to provoke planning by way of cooperative neighborhoods based on self-help dwellings. This approach was grounded on Geddes' survey of Tel Aviv's early premise on housing and extends beyond Geddes' period to the brutalist housing estates of the 1950s and 1960s. The result is a new historiographic perspective on Tel Aviv's UNESCO-declared modern urbanism vis-à-vis housing as the cell unit for urban living. Further, insights regarding Tel Aviv's housing-based planning are relevant beyond this city to other examples of the town planning movement. It proposes rethinking modern urban planning before the consolidation of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) principles, namely when planned settlements were explicitly experimental and involved diverse processes, scales, methods, practices and agents. Housing-a key arena for the modernization of the discipline of architecture, as well as for the consolidation of the discipline of urban planning-is studied here as the intersection of sociopolitical, formal, aesthetic, and structural elements of the city.
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Large urban developments (LUDs) have been driving contemporary neoliberal urban housing development worldwide, marked by scholarly and public discourses on the transition from housing as a basic civil right to housing as investment... more
Large urban developments (LUDs) have been driving contemporary neoliberal urban housing development worldwide, marked by scholarly and public discourses on the transition from housing as a basic civil right to housing as investment channel and financial good. Based on interviews, documentary films, architectural drawings and planning documents, this article examines the interrelations between architectural and entrepreneurial factors shaping LUDs in the contemporary neoliberal context. Analyzing several LUDs in Israel, Denmark and Spain, this article unpacks the paradox of neoliberal housing development-namely the unfulfilled free market promise of variety and multiple choice versus the reality of replicated, uniform dwelling units in repetitive residential buildings and identical neighborhoods characterizing residential landscapes worldwide. This article explores the corresponding relationship between design elements, design processes and entrepreneurial marketing decision-making. Our study reveals the cardinal role of architectural design in characterizing , financing, licensing and marketing LUDs, labeling them as unique-rather than uniform-developments compared with 'regular' neighborhoods. Keywords architectural design; housing development; large urban development; neoliberalism; urban housing Issue This article is part of the issue "Large Urban Developments and the Future of Cities" edited by Efrat Eizenberg (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel).
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C o p y r i g h t I n t e l l e c t L t d 2 0 1 9 N o t f o r d i s t r i b u t i o n C o p y r i g h t I n t e l l e c t L t d 2 0 1 9 N o t f o r d i s t r i b u t i o n Abstract Conducting research on Israel's settlement project has... more
C o p y r i g h t I n t e l l e c t L t d 2 0 1 9 N o t f o r d i s t r i b u t i o n C o p y r i g h t I n t e l l e c t L t d 2 0 1 9 N o t f o r d i s t r i b u t i o n Abstract Conducting research on Israel's settlement project has become increasingly difficult throughout the past decade due to restrictions on public access to both the field and archives, including those of contemporary planning data. Meanwhile, scholars and activists have continued to document the spatial implications of settlements by diversifying their methods, including using architecture as forensic evidence of political aggression. In response, those who regulate access to archives and the field have focused on obfuscating information that could corroborate the illegality of settlements. This has led to a cyclical process in which the exposure of information and data has prompted the creation of further barriers to the field. Deep gaps in formal, authoritative data require methodological creativity and flexibility, such as reading the built environment itself as a primary source. Borrowing from Roland Barthes, this article points to the transgressive potential of architecture as a punc-tum, a point that opens research to multiple interpretations and helps researchers circumvent restrictions imposed by those regulating access to primary material. In this case study, we show how limited access to archival data has led researchers to study pre-approved settlement planning documents and settler-produced documentary clips, interweaving field and archive in meaningful ways. We argue that, by taking such an approach, researchers may transcend not only issues of access but also traditional boundaries of disciplines. Scholars and the general public alike have critically discussed the architecture and planning of settlements as structural violence in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eyal Weizman, Oren Yiftachel, Neve Gordon, and
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Footprint 24 brings together housing-as-design with housing-as-policy and housing-as-market to discuss what is, today, the value of housing. It discusses how the architecture of housing plays a role in changing behavioural norms and... more
Footprint 24 brings together housing-as-design with housing-as-policy and housing-as-market to discuss what is, today, the value of housing. It discusses how the architecture of housing plays a role in changing behavioural norms and models of subjectivation promoted by the neoliberal ideological agenda. The contributions included in this issue examine different ways of addressing the production of housing either as a social right or a commodity, or both combined. Reviewing cases from North America, Europe and Asia, they discuss the extent to which the social and economic agendas of the public sector and the market determine the architecture of housing. The background of the discussion is defined by a deadlock: the architectural discourse calls upon the state to re-provide housing and solve the crisis, while the neoliberal state is not interested in commissioning housing. Against this background, this issue examines how the architecture discipline can engage in new ways of responding to the neoliberal state of affairs, examining the entwined relation between ‘architecture’ as a cultural product and ‘housing’ as a socioeconomic need.
Issue's editors: Nelson Mota and Yael Allweil
Issue's editors: Nelson Mota and Yael Allweil
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A review of 'Homeland' by Yael Padan for City Journal
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This article identifies a transformation in Israel’s housing ethos from the construction of houses as civilian shelter to their construction as an act of national and neoliberal violence. Housing, once materialising the State of Israel’s... more
This article identifies a transformation in Israel’s housing ethos from the construction of houses as civilian shelter to their construction as an act of national and neoliberal violence. Housing, once materialising the State of Israel’s raison d’etre as shelter from Jewish persecution has transformed to the scene of offence and retaliation in the struggle over the West Bank, as declared by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s noted ‘they kill, we build’ statement. Conducting a close analysis of housing and settlement history since 1967, I challenge the accepted historiography of the settlement movement and identify the pivotal moment of change by which the settlement project transformed its housing ethos from civilian shelter to ‘civilian occupation’ to the Kedumim settlement outpost in the early 1990s. This transformation parallels the neoliberalisation of the housing market in Israel proper since the 1990s, protested as neoliberal violence by the 2011 housing protest movement. This article contributes to our understanding of spatial violence by identifying housing as the object of agonistic violence, invoking Chantalle Mouffe’s concept of the object of agonism and pointing to housing as the object of contemporary negotiations over the very terms and values of the Israeli polity.
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A dramatic change unfolded in Palestine's landscape starting in the 1860s. Within about forty years, Palestine's fortified cities spilled beyond their centuries-old walls, and a new milieu of landowners developed a vast new housing and... more
A dramatic change unfolded in Palestine's landscape starting in the 1860s. Within about forty years, Palestine's fortified cities spilled beyond their centuries-old walls, and a new milieu of landowners developed a vast new housing and settlement form: the plantation. Historical maps and accounts of Jaffa indicate that some 7500 dunam (750 hectares) of groves were developed around the region between 1858 and 1878, dotted with a large number of structures (fig. 1a-b). 1 This new landscape comprised vast fields and orchards, landlord mansions, and small clusters of serf huts. Plantations were sites for a " new " Palestinian society, where all land-related social ties were irrevocably transformed, replacing older land-based identities with a modern model of for-profit production. Modern-vernacular architecture housed new ways of life and conceptions of polity among the newly-expansive lands, vast accumulated wealth, and exploitation of the landless. Plantations were the result of the period of modernization in the Ottoman Empire and its gover-nance, during which land was identified as the Empire's greatest asset, and leaders aimed to better exploit it. 2 The Tanzimat, or reforms, included the 1858 land modernization code, which commodi-fied state lands, annulled cultivation-based ownership, and applied a modern system of legal registration throughout the Empire. 3 Consequently, a few local and absentee owners obtained vast lands, while many fellahin (peasants) lost access to land altogether, and with it many other rights as well. It has been argued that the overarching consequences of land modernization marked the beginning of modernization in the Middle East. 4 Surprisingly, Western travelers and consuls, members of the local elite, and even Ottoman officials discussed the post-reform built environment as a traditional landscape representative of native or biblical Palestine, often using the Bible itself as a reference, disregarding—knowingly or ignorantly— that it was in fact a modern landscape. 5 Palestine's plantations are an opportunity to recognize the
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Chapter in The Practice of Freedom
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To cite this article: Yael Allweil & Rachel Kallus (2013) Reforming the political body in the city: The interplay of male bodies and territory in urban public spaces in Tel Aviv, City: analysis of urban
Long before the political transformation of rule in Palestine from Empire to nation-state materialized in 1948, the housing environment in Eretz-Israel – Palestine had already been national rather than imperial. Identifying a... more
Long before the political transformation of rule in Palestine from Empire to nation-state materialized in 1948, the housing environment in Eretz-Israel – Palestine had already been national rather than imperial. Identifying a historiographical and methodological gap in the research, this paper examines the housing environments formed as result of the Ottoman 1858 land commodification code which "completely transformed the relationship of people to land in the Ottoman Empire by permitting individuals to possess large areas of land," studied primarily as a legal – rather than political – phenomenon. i Using detailed examination of the dwelling environment post 1858, this paper identifies a 'restart' in mid-nineteenth century political system in Late Ottoman Palestine, from imperial dominance to national consciousness developed as part of a land-reform movement that gave rise to a new understanding of what it means to be native to the land, as well as to a new native ...
In the past three decades, a growing number of scholars in the humanities and social sciences have turned their attention to the spaces of the built environment as a means to understand historical and social processes, thereby... more
In the past three decades, a growing number of scholars in the humanities and social sciences have turned their attention to the spaces of the built environment as a means to understand historical and social processes, thereby dramatically affecting our understanding of the latter. Edward Soja has defined the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences as "a response to a longstanding ontological and epistemological bias that privileged time over space in all the human sciences, including spatial disciplines like geography and architecture." Soja thus positions spatiality against temporality, or space against history. In turn, the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences has led to a "social turn" in disciplines that study the built environment, particularly architectural history. In this paper, I discuss the ways in which Michel Foucault's and Henri Lefebvre's "spatial turn" have enabled both scholars to overcome what they unde...
Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, or Palestinian Israelis, are marginalized in a society based on Jewish nationalism, religion and ethnicity. While Israel witnessed numerous social struggles for equality and inclusion, none attempted... more
Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, or Palestinian Israelis, are marginalized in a society based on Jewish nationalism, religion and ethnicity. While Israel witnessed numerous social struggles for equality and inclusion, none attempted to challenge Jewish nationalism as its core principle for citizenship. The 2011 eruption of mass social unrest, the largest since the 1970s, focused on popular demands for housing as a basic right of citizenship. Indeed, protest started with a housing act: the creation of dozens of tent camps all over the country. Protesters called for a new polity based on housing, expressed by one of the movement's symbols: an Israeli flag whose national/religious Star of David was replaced by a house. The right to housing was thereby proclaimed as the primary criterion for social inclusion, and residence as more valid category for citizenship than nationalism or religion. While the housing-based social movement initially puzzled Palestinian Israelis, tents soo...
Research Interests: History, Architecture, Urban Planning, Palestine, Housing, and 3 moreZionism, Israel, and Nation Building
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For many years, only tourists regarded the Tel Aviv shoreline as the most attractive place in the city. Tel Avivians considered it indecent because of improper body exposure and unhealthy due to the seaside humidity. The shore – neglected... more
For many years, only tourists regarded the Tel Aviv shoreline as the most attractive place in the city. Tel Avivians considered it indecent because of improper body exposure and unhealthy due to the seaside humidity. The shore – neglected and detached from the fabric of the city – attracted marginal groups whose behavior was considered unsuitable or even deviant (Azaryahu 2001). A classic, removed, 'other' space resonating with Foucault's concept of heterotopia. It was only in the 1980s that the municipality and the broader public discovered the beach as an asset and that massive development took off. With these changes the marginal ecology of the shoreline and the patchwork of other worlds suddenly found itself within the fabric of the city. The shoreline became a very interesting composite of 'normative' space dotted with 'pockets of deviant behavior'. While some of those pockets were quickly pushed out, some maintain for decades as distinct territories...
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Abstract: Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, or Palestinian Israelis, are marginalized in a society based on Jewish nationalism, religion and ethnicity. While Israel witnessed numerous social struggles for equality and inclusion, none... more
Abstract:
Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, or Palestinian Israelis, are marginalized in a society based on Jewish nationalism, religion and ethnicity. While Israel witnessed numerous social struggles for equality and inclusion, none attempted to challenge Jewish nationalism as its core principle. The 2011 eruption of mass social unrest, the largest since the 1970s, focused on popular demands for housing as a basic right of citizenship. Indeed, protest started with a housing act: the creation of dozens of tent camps all over the country. Protesters called for a new polity based on housing, expressed by one of the movement’s symbols: an Israeli flag whose national/religious Star of David was replaced by a house. The right to housing was thereby proclaimed as the primary criterion for social inclusion. While the housing-based social movement initially puzzled Palestinian Israelis, tents soon appeared in Arab towns. Palestinian-Israeli participation proved significant, forming surprising alliances among social strata previously understood as irrevocably polarized. Examining the camps of Jaffa and Qalansuwa, this article looks into the history and implications of housing for Palestinian Israelis, and for Israeli society at large. Using Chantal Mouffe’s and Bruno Latour’s work, we ask: ‘Can dwelling be a strong enough ground for a citizenry-based polity?’
Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, or Palestinian Israelis, are marginalized in a society based on Jewish nationalism, religion and ethnicity. While Israel witnessed numerous social struggles for equality and inclusion, none attempted to challenge Jewish nationalism as its core principle. The 2011 eruption of mass social unrest, the largest since the 1970s, focused on popular demands for housing as a basic right of citizenship. Indeed, protest started with a housing act: the creation of dozens of tent camps all over the country. Protesters called for a new polity based on housing, expressed by one of the movement’s symbols: an Israeli flag whose national/religious Star of David was replaced by a house. The right to housing was thereby proclaimed as the primary criterion for social inclusion. While the housing-based social movement initially puzzled Palestinian Israelis, tents soon appeared in Arab towns. Palestinian-Israeli participation proved significant, forming surprising alliances among social strata previously understood as irrevocably polarized. Examining the camps of Jaffa and Qalansuwa, this article looks into the history and implications of housing for Palestinian Israelis, and for Israeli society at large. Using Chantal Mouffe’s and Bruno Latour’s work, we ask: ‘Can dwelling be a strong enough ground for a citizenry-based polity?’
This article examines the formation and consolidation of a housing-based social contract between state and citizens during the first years of Israeli national sovereignty. Calls for a renewal of this contract, including demands for equal... more
This article examines the formation and consolidation of a housing-based social contract between state and citizens during the first years of Israeli national sovereignty. Calls for
a renewal of this contract, including demands for equal access to housing, underlay the mass social unrest in the country during the summer of 2011. Initially, the creation of Israel
in 1948 brought a housing “big bang” to Israel-Palestine. Mass Jewish migration both demanded vast housing solutions and brought a mass loss of housing among the Palestinian
population. The year 1948 also marked a watershed in the use of housing as a nation building strategy within the Zionist movement, transforming it from an effort based on
accumulating self-governing subjects to one obliged to house newly empowered citizens within a citizen-legitimized political framework. The article shows how these conditions
ultimately led to the articulation of a state-citizen contract that included a “housing regime” aimed at transforming immigrants into proper citizens. Despite the centrality of the interests
of the state in these activities, however, the article also explores how housing programs were planned and produced in direct response to continuing demands by citizens. The consolidation of “regime” and “subjects” as the opposing ends of modern governance, as suggested by Foucault, was thus deeply contested. The article studies three different housing
schemes developed during Israel’s first five years, a period curiously little studied in architectural terms.
a renewal of this contract, including demands for equal access to housing, underlay the mass social unrest in the country during the summer of 2011. Initially, the creation of Israel
in 1948 brought a housing “big bang” to Israel-Palestine. Mass Jewish migration both demanded vast housing solutions and brought a mass loss of housing among the Palestinian
population. The year 1948 also marked a watershed in the use of housing as a nation building strategy within the Zionist movement, transforming it from an effort based on
accumulating self-governing subjects to one obliged to house newly empowered citizens within a citizen-legitimized political framework. The article shows how these conditions
ultimately led to the articulation of a state-citizen contract that included a “housing regime” aimed at transforming immigrants into proper citizens. Despite the centrality of the interests
of the state in these activities, however, the article also explores how housing programs were planned and produced in direct response to continuing demands by citizens. The consolidation of “regime” and “subjects” as the opposing ends of modern governance, as suggested by Foucault, was thus deeply contested. The article studies three different housing
schemes developed during Israel’s first five years, a period curiously little studied in architectural terms.
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Coming out from Routledge UK August 2016
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HOMELAND prelims
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HOMELAND is out!