Ville Blanche: Levantine Gentlemen, Architectural Modernism and the “White City” of Tel Aviv, 1930–48

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the untold story of Levantine architects who were active in Tel Aviv of the 1930s and 1940s, following the trajectories of cousins Zaky and Robert (Hillel) Chelouche and their contemporaries. Members of Palestine’s French speaking Sephardic-Mizrachi elite, these architects went to study in Paris at a time when French modernist architecture and urban planning was applied to France’s colonial project, and brought back with them to Tel Aviv architectural ideas which helped shape the city as a Mediterranean modern town, similar to other cities of the period, such as Casablanca. The contribution of these Levantine gentleman-architects to Tel Aviv’s celebrated architectural heritage has been largely overlooked by the prevailing narrative of the city as a “Bauhaus city,” of central European modernism. This article is challenging this narrative by presenting the important work and impact of these architects, and their clients, in the city, proposing a new understanding of the heritage of the so called “White City.”