Skip navigation
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp0105741r85q
Title: THE OBJECT OF ZIONISM: ARCHITECTURE OF STATEHOOD IN ISRAEL
Authors: Efrat, Zvi
Advisors: Colomina, Beatriz
Weizman, Eyal
Contributors: Architecture Department
Keywords: Brutalism
New Towns
Post War architecture
State architecture
Zionism
Subjects: Architecture
Issue Date: 2014
Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University
Abstract: Dissertation Abstract The Object of Zionism investigates the fabrication of the State of Israel as a unique project in modern history--unprecedented in its relative scope and rates of growth; ideological and visionary roots; political and ethical circumstances; and concentration of architectural experiments. These experiments entailed the molding of a new artificial landscape and infrastructure, the destruction and expulsion of indigenous Palestinian communities, and the construction of dozens of New Towns and hundreds of new rural settlements for Jewish refugees and immigrants. Indeed, contrary to common belief and to visual impression, the State of Israel was not born of haphazard improvisation, emergency routine, or speculative ventures, and certainly not of gradual autochthonous build-up, but rather of the objective to construct a comprehensive, controlled, and efficient model-State and put into praxis modernist regional, urban, architectural, and sociological theories. The Dissertation is conceived along the intricate dialectics of Land and State. These two foundational notions are positioned not as a diachronic sequence (referring until 1948 to the Land of Israel and thereafter to the State of Israel), but, quite the contrary, as an immanent bipolar condition informing all textual manifestos and spatial manifestations that may be referred to as Zionist. Chapter 1 describes Zionism as an ideologically rural construct, as a strategically expansionist movement, and as an architecturally inventive culture, producing ever more new settlement typologies. Chapter 2 studies the initial master-plan of the State of Israel, published in 1951. This plan, within less than a decade, transformed from a statement of 4 principles into a mega-project transcending its originators and becoming a self-generating planning machine. Chapter 3 depicts the attempt to constitute a continuous political hegemony and a consensual cultural uniformity in Israel of the 1950s and to support such an official "Statist" attitude by a conscious and fairly elaborate architectural discourse. Chapter 4 examines both the efficiency and benevolence of the welfare-state and its coercive policy of social engineering associated with the ambitious project of mass housing. Chapter 5 narrates the all-too-decisive absorption of Brutalist architecture in Israel, and its instantaneous diffusion throughout all private and public sectors, programs, and typologies.
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp0105741r85q
Alternate format: The Mudd Manuscript Library retains one bound copy of each dissertation. Search for these copies in the library's main catalog
Type of Material: Academic dissertations (Ph.D.)
Language: en
Appears in Collections:Architecture

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Efrat_princeton_0181D_10926.pdf138.66 MBAdobe PDFView/Download


Items in Dataspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.