“Destined to become a contemporary classic.” —Eyal Weizman
Contrary to popular belief, the architecture and spatial politics of the State of Israel were not born haphazardly out of emergency or speculation. The Israeli built environment is the deliberate response to a unique objective—how to design and build a model state nearly instantaneously. To do this, space had to be remade: a new terrain was molded, and dozens of new towns and hundreds of rural settlements were constructed. Fashionable postwar architectural trends like Brutalism and Structuralism were appropriated as signifiers of national vigor.
The Object of Zionism is a critical study of Zionist spatial planning and the architectural fabrication of the State of Israel from the early 20th century to the 1960s and '70s. Zvi Efrat scrutinizes Israel as a singular modernist project, unprecedented in its political and ethical circumstances and its hyper-production of spatial and structural experiments. Efrat explores the construction of the State of Israel in a book that promises to become a standard reference on Israeli architectural history.
Architect and architectural historian Zvi Efrat is a partner at Efrat-Kowalsky Architects in Tel-Aviv and was head of the Department of Architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, between 2002 and 2010. He studied at Pratt Institute, New York University and Princeton University and has curated numerous exhibitions, among them Borderline Disorder and The Object of Zionism. Efrat is a Graham Foundation awardee.
Featured image is reproduced from 'The Object of Zionism.'
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Efrat explores the construction of the State of Israel in a book that promises to become a standard reference on Israeli architectural history.
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Featured spreads (from the chapter on Brutalism, "the architecture of Israeli patriotism," at top, and a section on the Sodom Dead Sea salt mines, where "Zionist utopia is collapsing into apocalypse," below) are reproduced from Zvi Efrat's monumental new study of the architecture of Israel, The Object of Zionism. Weighing in at 1,000 pages, with 1,200 mostly black-and-white images dating mostly from the 1930s to the 1970s, this remarkable work of critical scholarship "relentlessly assembles and interprets a colossal archive," according to noted architectural historian Beatriz Colomina. "In a stunning hypothesis, Efrat argues that the State of Israel is a conscious architectural project. The book presents a multi-layered and highly detailed historical analysis of each phase of the self-construction of the state—investigating the motivations, philosophy, tactics, realization and impact of a single architectural project at the scale of a nation. Our perception of the entanglement of architecture and politics is permanently transformed." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 1,000 pgs / 1,200 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $70.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $98 ISBN: 9783959051330 PUBLISHER: Spector Books AVAILABLE: 2/19/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA AFR ME
“Destined to become a contemporary classic.” —Eyal Weizman
Contrary to popular belief, the architecture and spatial politics of the State of Israel were not born haphazardly out of emergency or speculation. The Israeli built environment is the deliberate response to a unique objective—how to design and build a model state nearly instantaneously. To do this, space had to be remade: a new terrain was molded, and dozens of new towns and hundreds of rural settlements were constructed. Fashionable postwar architectural trends like Brutalism and Structuralism were appropriated as signifiers of national vigor.
The Object of Zionism is a critical study of Zionist spatial planning and the architectural fabrication of the State of Israel from the early 20th century to the 1960s and '70s. Zvi Efrat scrutinizes Israel as a singular modernist project, unprecedented in its political and ethical circumstances and its hyper-production of spatial and structural experiments. Efrat explores the construction of the State of Israel in a book that promises to become a standard reference on Israeli architectural history.
Architect and architectural historian Zvi Efrat is a partner at Efrat-Kowalsky Architects in Tel-Aviv and was head of the Department of Architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, between 2002 and 2010. He studied at Pratt Institute, New York University and Princeton University and has curated numerous exhibitions, among them Borderline Disorder and The Object of Zionism. Efrat is a Graham Foundation awardee.
