The White City in Tel Aviv was built for the most part by German Jewish architects who had fled Nazi Germany around1933. The majority of these had been students at the Bauhaus or had learned their profession with one of the modern architects of the avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s, for instance Le Corbusier, Erich Mendelsohn, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Walter Gropius. (Shmuel Mestechkin, Munio Gitai-Weinraub, Shlomo Bernstein, Arieh Sharon as Bauhaus students; Dov Carmi, Genia Averbuch, Ben-Ami Shulman, Ze’ev Rechter and Joseph Neufeld with other architects). From Europe to Tel Aviv they brought their skills, building materials and their own architectural aesthetic, which was guided by the maxim “form follows function”: strong linear elements, flat roofs and white facades, which led to the neighbourhood being named White City. From 1931 to 1956, 4,000 buildings were built here in the International Style. Around 1990 1,000 of these were placed under a preservation order; in 2003 the White City was awarded UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status. Over the years the ravages of time and the corrosive sea air have left their mark on the unique buildings, such a great number of which are found only here. They are now going to be restored and in order to save this singular architectonic gem from decay, Germany is providing Israel with financial support to the value of ca. 3.2 million dollars (around 2.9 million euros).
Further information about the White City in Tel Aviv is found on the homepage of the Bauhaus Center in Tel Aviv.