From Within 1

-

A section of an original wall painting


This isn't the first time that I've done a post on the annual batim mibifnim event ( Houses From Within). But it's such a rare opportunity to see the inside of some of the most interesting buildings and spaces in the city that it's just too good to pass up. So here are a few images from this weekend's harvest, with more coming separately. By the way, just skimming the programme online will give you an idea of the scope of Tel Aviv's architectural and urban treasures.


   



We started close to home, in a building on Rehov Mohliver built in 1926. The couple renting this apartment have done a lovely job of preserving many features of the old Eclectic Style with minimum expense and maximum care and taste. To reveal the lovely old tiles in the photo below they had to scrape away the linoleum that had covered it.     




On the top tier of this antique magazine rack sits an original copy of a book of photographs taken by the Avraham Sosskin (1881-1963)  who documented Tel Aviv (founded 1909) in its earliest years. The proud owner showed us that it was signed by Thomas Mann (!). Her husband said that since the building wasn't listed for preservation, he was afraid that it would be knocked down to make way for a new building and all this would disappear.    





We pedaled southwards, deep into the industrial  area between Salame and Kibbutz Galuot, where all sorts of interesting spaces have been opening up between the factories, workshops and garages.This is the entrance to the Amir Gallery that makes custom made steel designs. 





Inside was this photo by Uri Machlev was printed on steel. 



Over the road, this industrial space has been turned into a work space that can be rented by young designers. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zoltan Kluger

-
Image
A Hagana despatcher in the 1948 War of Independence on what seems to be a stationary motorbike. I took the photos in this post at today's exhibition. Went to see an exhibition at the Eeretz Yisrael Museum. Zoltan Kluger, Chief Photographer 1933-1958." These are official Zionist propaganda photos, some of them staged, but many of them impressive nevertheless. He also photographed Palestinian refugees (although not for the Zionist institutions) and workers clearing the rubble from abandoned Palestinian villages after the War of Independence. Although a staunch Zionist, the Hungarian born Zoltan also had an uneasy relationship with the Zionist institutions that provided his livelihood and, like many Israeli artists even today, fretted about being unnoticed because he was working in a Levantine backwater. Well to do residents of British Mandated Palestine taking a flight from Haifa to Tel Aviv (1930s) "I'm suffocating," he was quoted as saying. "I'll die....
Read more

The only matkot museum in the world

-
Image
Meet Amnon.  We met him on a stormy Shabbat morning on the side of a steep side road in Neve Tzedek. He was putting away his bicycle after giving up the idea of playing matkot on the beach, something he does on a daily basis and has been doing for at least 50 years. He invited us to see his apartment otherwise known as the Only Matkot Museum in the World. Amnon was born and bred in Neve Tzedek and is a major figure in the matkot community. There are some 350 matkot (beach paddles) of every conceivable size and colour in Amnon's matkot museum interspersed with large paintings of the northern European forest scenes so popular among people who live in hot countries. His devotion to the sport is boundless. Amnon, still sprightly now, thanks to matkot, is surrounded here by photos of him in action in younger days (click to enlarge). Now he and his fellow matkot-obsessed friends play on a concrete strip underneath one of the hotels on Gordon Beach where they have been gr...
Read more

My Unfinished Apartheid Thriller

-
Image
                 An Israeli Prime Minister as imagined by the DALL-E AI programme     About six months ago, I was revisited by the writing bug and decided to try my hand at fiction  - a "diplomatic thriller" to be more specific. The choice of genre was not dictated by any literary preferences. I'm not a big fan of thrillers. But the idea was to use the thriller as the most suitable vehicle to write about what was really bugging me - Israel's inevitable slide into apartheid.      I also thought that my professional experience might come in handy. For more than two decades I worked as the press officer for the EU Delegation to Israel and followed the sometimes turbulent relations between Israel and the European Union from the vantage point of an Israeli working inside the EU, in other words as someone with a split identity. I believed that this familiarity with the mind-sets and decision making processes of bo...
Read more