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Tel Aviv officially crowned ‘Creative City’ by UNESCO

 

A decade after UNESCO recognized Tel Aviv as a World Cultural Heritage site…

 

UNESCO Announces Tel Aviv a Creative City

 

Tel Aviv has previously received official recognition from UNESCO as a world heritage site for its extraordinary and beautiful collection of more than 4000 original white Bauhaus buildings scattered throughout the city. Today, the White City is to enjoy an additional title of Creative City as Tel Aviv is now the newest member of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in the category of Media Arts.

 

UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization established the Creative Cities Network in order to encourage cooperation between international cities as a means to promote local creative industries, harnessing entrepreneurship and creativity to strengthen the local economy and social development. This evening, Tel Aviv will join 41 other cities each recognized in one of seven categories: Literature, Film, Music, Craft and Folk Art, Design, Media Arts and Gastronomy. Other notable members include Dublin (Literature), Liverpool (Music), Sydney (Film) and Berlin (Design).

 

Link to UNESCO’s website: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/creativity/creative-cities-network/

 

Tel Aviv will become a member of the Creative Cities Network recognized in the field of Media Arts. Cities in this area are characterized by the existence of creative industries and cultural activity driven by the use of digital technology and the successful implementation of media arts for the benefit of improving urban life. This is measured by the accessibility of cultural events and products through digital technology and the existence of electronic art forms and their integration into the life of civil society and their ability to strengthening local working studios and media arts projects.

 

The city’s flourishing high-tech scene and enterprises, especially in the media arts field – both earned Tel Aviv its place in the Creative Cities Network. Currently there are more than 700 early stage startups in Tel Aviv, a city with just over 400,000 residents. Tel Aviv has the second highest number of startups of any city in the world, and has the highest number of startups per capita.

 

The acceptance of Tel Aviv into the Creative Cities Network is a great honor for the city and will only strengthen the development of activities, projects and initiatives in the field of Media Arts and culture, and continue the Municipalities activities with the wide range of communities living in the city, academia, the business sector, industry, cultural institutions and more. Alongside local activities, an important aspect of the Network is creating international partnerships between the cities. Partnerships based on cooperative learning and the exchange of knowledge, enabling each partner to harness the creativity in their local economy and use it for social development. In order to retain the title, Tel Aviv will present annually to the organization and demonstrate the past-years cooperative initiatives with officials in the city and internationally.

 

Commenting on the achievement, the Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Ron Huldai said:

 

“Ten years ago, UNESCO declared the White City of Tel Aviv as a world heritage site. The world recognized the importance of the city’s architectural past. Starting from today, Tel Aviv’s entrance to UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network UNESCO reflects the world’s recognition of the city’s contribution to the present and the future – recognition of Tel Aviv as a vibrant center of cultural creation and breakthrough technology, the creative industries and the focus of the original visionary scene of digital innovation and initiatives”.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxvevYZ2suw Urban Symphony featuring the Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo

 

http://youtu.be/-n_BgwdovOY Comical clip about Tel Aviv with quotes from Barack Obama

 

 

jumpingman BoardWalk_photo_by_Kfir_Bolotin_60 Atidim_7_photo_by_Kfir_Bolotin_24photos by Kfir Bolotin

 

Architecture · Bauhaus · History · Tel Aviv · Tourism

Bauhaus Tel Aviv – The White City

As seen in Lust for Life on Belgian TV – January 16th: “4000 Bauhaus gevels

What Is Bauhaus – source: the Bauhaus Center in Tel Aviv

Bauhaus school in Dessau
The Bauhaus school building

The Bauhaus was a school which operated in Germany between 1919 and 1933 and was devoted to art, architecture and design. It had remarkable influences on all these disciplines. Although throughout it’s years it carried varied approaches, some ideas were maintained. One main principle is the reunion of the arts and the crafts in order to achieve total works of art. According to this principle, all arts, as well as new technologies, should be combined in the art of building.

A significant approach in the school was the search for the basic ingredients of art and design. Thus evolved the “Bauhaus Style” in architecture and design—in which primary forms and colors are given great importance.

The Bauhaus had a great impact on the Modern Movement in architecture, embracing functionalism and rationality and condemning ornament. The architectural style of the modern movement is called “The International Style” or “Bauhaus Style”. This style is characterized by asymmetry, compositions of primary volumes—cubic and rounded, ribbon windows, pilots, thermometer windows, balconies, roof terraces and plays of shadow and light.

Bauhaus In Israel – source: the Bauhaus Center in Tel Aviv

Reading station
Modern white building rises from the sand in Tel Aviv

Four Israeli architects studied in the Bauhaus school: Arieh Sharon, Shmuel Mestechkin, Munio Gitai-Weinraub and Shlomo Bernstein. However, the influence of the Bauhaus on the architecture built in Israel in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s was by far wider than being expressed by those architects only. The legacy of the Bauhaus was absorbed by other architects, studying in Brussels, Ghent and Italy, such as: Dov Carmi, Genia Averbuch, Ben-Ami Shulman, Ze’ev Rechter and Joseph Neufeld. And of course—all of those prominent figures presented the new ideas to just everyone who was around.

In Tel Aviv only, more than 4,000 “Bauhaus Style” buildings were built. Thousands more were built in Haifa, Jerusalem, the Kibbutzim and elsewhere in Israel. The main question is, therfore—how, in an era when this new style was still unpopular, did it reach such magnitude in the built work in Israel? The main answer is that the social-cultural ideology behind the “Bauhaus Style” fit like a glove to the socialist-Zionist movement and to the striving of this movement to create a new world. White houses, in every sense—form, style, material, functionality, color—grew from the sands without a past, towards a future.

bauhaus2

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