Publication date:
15 January 2015Length of book:
256 pagesPublisher
Pluto PressISBN-13: 9781783711932
This is the history of colonialism as seen though the architecture of Israel/Palestine. Tel Aviv is the 'White City', said to have risen from the sands of the desert, acclaimed worldwide for its architectural heritage and gleaming Bauhaus-inspired Modernism.
Jaffa is the 'Black City', the Palestinian city that was largely obliterated to make way for a new European-style architecture at the heart of a newly-formed Israel.
Both a gripping narrative and a unique architectural record, this book shows how any city in the world is made not only of stones and concrete but also of stories and histories - victors and losers, predator and prey. In this way, the legend of the Black City and the White City, architecture and war, is our story too.
Jaffa is the 'Black City', the Palestinian city that was largely obliterated to make way for a new European-style architecture at the heart of a newly-formed Israel.
Both a gripping narrative and a unique architectural record, this book shows how any city in the world is made not only of stones and concrete but also of stories and histories - victors and losers, predator and prey. In this way, the legend of the Black City and the White City, architecture and war, is our story too.
'A superbly researched and exemplary architectural study ... If you want an explanation of the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict - and of just how deep they go, right into the very foundations of the buildings - this book gives one of the most unusual and convincing accounts'