Tel Aviv

I thought I'd blog a little more about the precedent project. Specifically, I'll talk about what I found about Tel Aviv's urban plan.

Several articles I initially read for the project mentioned Tel Aviv along with Chandigarh and Brasilia as the most famous examples of a modernist city. Once I really looked into Tel Aviv, however, it seemed the city was more of a garden city with modernist architecture.

The city planner, Patrick Geddes, said it himself that the plan is derived mostly from garden city ideals but with a more urban character. The city is divided into superblocks like the other modernist cities, but in Tel Aviv the dividing roads are tree-lined boulevards rather than high speed highways. The buildings fronting onto these boulevards are mixed-use with commercial space on the first floor and residential units on the upper floors. The superblock is then further divided by a network of secondary roads that form an irregular pattern. These roads calm traffic similar to cul-de-sacs but without the disruption of traffic associated with cul-de-sacs. It is along these roads that the houses are found. Then in the very center of the block is a common green, or "village green" as Geddes called it. The neighborhood's civic buildings, schools, and other public buildings are located around this green.