28/05/2023
Dunkelblum House at the corner of Yael and Ruth streets is adjacent to Ruth Garden – a charming public garden in the heart of a “home block”, exemplifying the successful implementation of the 1925 Geddes Plan for Tel Aviv. The building which attracts immediate attention is sitting on a podium, and in a way, ‘commanding’ the street.
The theatrical touch of the 1935 building derives directly from the rich career that its architect Oskar Kauffmann had in Berlin during the 1920s, as a designer of theaters and cinemas, some of them to become local icons. In 1934 Kauffman immigrated to Palestine, and with his Berlin partner Eugen Stolzer designed the building of Habima – the national theater, and later on the Ora cinema in Haifa.
Preservation Architect Amnon Bar Or chose to describe the Dunkelblum House, at the Open House בתים מבפנים events, as “a special mixture, reminding of a theater with its symmetric design, but at the same time using the modernist language”.
Kauffman’s mastery is revealed here in a few original features like the rounded windows which are sliding sideways, the interplay between the smooth plaster and the decorative (Blumenputz) one, the softly rounded corners of the balconies and the main building volume, down to the design of the outdoor staircases and balconies balustrades elegantly enhancing the horizontal flow.
The semi oval balconies on the lateral façade facing Ruth garden which remind of theater loggias, add richness to this unique composition which breaks away from the cubic articulation, so typical of Tel Aviv’s 1930s modernism.
Amnon Bar Or - Tal Gazit Architects Ltd
UP Architects
Tel Aviv City
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