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Hotel De La Mer Feng Shui Tel Aviv is housed in a historic Tel Aviv Bauhaus building with a rich cultural history. The characteristic white walls, flat roof, flowing lines, ship motif, asymmetry and other features make this an instantly recognizable product of the world-renowned Bauhaus School of Architecture, a style closely identified with Tel Aviv, which, with its distinctive scenery and the world’s highest concentration of Bauhaus buildings, was officially given the name, “The White City.”
In July 2003 UNESCO designated Tel Aviv a World Heritage Site, with special reference to the exceptionally large quantity of Bauhaus and International Style architecture (the latter being a term used for the same building style outside of its native Germany), and advanced urban planning (it was originally planned as a garden suburb for what at the time was the principal city of Jaffa). The characteristic whitewashed finish of the majority of buildings inspired the title of “White City.”
 Background
The Bauhaus School - also the name of a renowned German Architectural College - arose out of a need to rehabilitate Germany quickly after World War I. The need for social and cultural change was pressing to shake free from the fussy and overly decorative Prussian style and focus on people and their practical everyday requirements. The result was a clean, simple design style that turned into a great architectural and artistic movement, the cornerstone of an “international” style of architecture. The Bauhaus College’s illustrious teachers included artists: Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Mies van der Rohe and others. The college was closed down when the Nazis came to power and the best of the (mostly Jewish) Bauhaus architects emigrated and continued to work in the United States and other countries around the world.
Tel Aviv and Bauhaus
Bauhaus arrived in Israel and Tel Aviv in the early 1930s, as architects fleeing Europe realized that Palestine, a small Socialist country with a pioneer spirit, was especially suited to their groundbreaking architectural work. Tel Aviv was built with residents’ practical needs and lifestyle in mind, as well as climatic considerations. The “White City” boasts over 4,000 Bauhaus buildings, most of which were built over a relatively short period of time following the intense wave of immigration in the 1930s.
Bauhaus characteristics
Clean, unadorned, simple lines.
Emphasis on functionality in preference to decoration and ornamentation.
Simplicity of construction and optimal exploitation of available area.
Car and ship motifs and flowing lines.
Building on stilt columns, flat roofs, white painted walls, horizontal strip windows, emphasizing of vertical stairwells with glass tiles, iron pipes and railings, asymmetry between different parts of the building, long, narrow windows, “temperature control” windows, and other features.
Famous Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Beit Hadar (comer of Harekevet Street and Begin Road) - Tel Aviv’s first office building.
Beit Ha’onia (Ship House) – Levanda Street
Chen Cinema (now Rav Chen) – Dizengoff Square
Polishuk Building (Hapil) – Magen David Square
Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv
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