Dana Silverstein Duani
In the 1980s, Israel experienced a turning point in its economic policy, changing from a socialist policy to a more liberal and capitalist policy and later on to neoliberalism.Reducing governmental intervention and shifting national developmentto the free market, resulting in the privatization of architectural planning. These changes were also reflected in the Tel Aviv’s architecture of the 1980s and 1990s and in the gradual creation of a new local architectural language, Tel Aviv Postmodernism.
This architecture is expressed on the façade designof Tel Aviv’s buildings, andis identified oniconic buildingsand onthousands of residential buildings that were built in those decades andare assimilated into the urban fabric. These consist of new buildings, hybrid buildingswith additions and new neighborhoodsthat reflect dramatic changes that took place in the design, planning mechanism, and architectural culture, following the creationof a professional institutional planning division in the 1980s.
The Planning Divisionimplemented its vision for the cityvia statute, igniting conceptual planning, master planningand regulating on what is supposed to be a market-led development, and also promoting non-statutory planning. They establishedpolicies and design guidelines for private buildings, with a direct effect on the architectural culture and thegradual creation of a new local architectural languagein the city.
This case study challenges the premise and contemporary researchthat neoliberalismincreased privatization of planning. Tel Aviv of the 1980s and 1990s demonstratesthat the cityunderwent a process of growing institutional involvement in planning, rather than afree-market domination and privatization of planning.In this paper I will present the changes that occurred in Tel Aviv’s Planning Division in the 1980s and 1990s and theimpact on the local architectural language by examiningthe processes that occurred, the new plans that were createdand the architectural language that developed.
Dana Silverstein-Duani: Architect and a doctoral student in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion, Israel. She is a part of Prof. Yael Allweil’s HousingLab: History and Future of Living research group. Her research examines Tel Aviv’s postmodern residential architectural language and urban design process from the 1980s and 1990s.