Odelya Bar-Yehuda
In this research, I examine how current real estate advertisements promote new high-rise neighborhoods in Israel. The “high suburbs” now realize governments’ housing programs, and contractors build them in many urban outskirts. Such Public-Private ventures reflect the local neoliberal framework that rose in Israel in the 80s’ together with adaptation of the postmodern terminology in architecture practice and discourses. In the last decade new neighborhoods are built with a large number of towers, and contractors promote and market tower-apartments as real estate
asset. This recent evolution, I argue, brings market images to the nation-wide Israeli context, with meaningful impacts on architecture practices and public discourses.
By analyzing the adds’ graphics and rhetoric, I show that contractors and advertisers aimed at popular desires, often emphasizing the apartments as economic opportunity, highlighting their luxurious standards. Most adds portray the neighborhoods’ landscape as a generic spectacle – shown from a bird’s eye or from high apartments’ windows and balconies. While views of public spaces and street level are rare, many images focus on private spaces and portray apartments’ interiors in detail. By interviewing architects of selected new high-rise neighborhoods, I aim at probing the impact of these images on their design, and at conceiving the implications of the current market on Israeli architects’ practice.
Odelya Bar-Yehuda
MA student, The David Azrieli School of Architecture, The David and Yolanda Katz, Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University
Supervisor: Prof. Talia Margalit