Tel-Aviv Sea Promenade

a vision for the Tel-Aviv sea and shore. SOLO EXHIBITION AT AMI STEINITZ GALLERY, JANUARY 1991

I was invited to exhibit as an architect for a one-woman-show, in the Ami Steinitz Gallery of Contemporary Art, in Tel-Aviv, in January 1991. I decided to exhibit a suggestion for the city of Tel-Aviv; a vision involved with the People’s Sea Promenade. It was at this moment in my career, in choosing this theme and content, and that site, all revolving around my passion with the open horizon, a nurtured body of knowledge to nurture.

Photo of the actual model

About the project

The Tel-Avivian Sea Promenade – Ha’ta’ye’let in Hebrew - as it exists, is a place for pedestrians to stroll, enjoy meeting people, sit on free chairs along the beach and watch the shore, the people, and, in the evening, the sunset. It is sunny and nicely warm in winter and catches the evening breeze in the sweaty summers. The sea-front promenade stretches from the northern part of Tel Aviv, where Gordon Street meets Hayarkon Street, and ends at the ‘Dolphinarium’, to continue again through the Clore Park and finally reaching its destination in Old Jaffa Port.

The Dolphinarium was originally a place for running entertaining performances focused on the dolphins’ pool, but over the years has changed roles many times. There is no pool anymore and it is used mostly as a place for parties and weddings. It is an eye-sore and an unpleasant territory for pedestrians to walk through; it tends to be bypassed by detour when continuing to walk towards the port of Jaffa. The Dolphinarium sits on a privately-owned piece of land, which is an unusual situation along the Israeli coastline, and therefore in spite of all the problems it brings, it is still there.

My plan was to exchange that piece of land with another in the sea, so as to clear the park from the Dolphinarium, (the owner would be receiving an equivalent size of territory on a little island in the sea, still looking west, in exchange), thus removing its long-standing ugly, depressing presence and opening the way for a continuing promenade all the way to Jaffa. That suggested small islet in the sea would have the four ‘Boutique Hotels’ (as they called them today) and a garden in front with cafes looking all around. The extended promenade into the sea reflected the three areas that the promenade led to.

Firstly, its southern part: this is the pier which was sitting heavily in the water with cafes and restaurants all along the stretch, with a swimming pool and aquarium underneath.

The second part included the five Hotels on pilotis in the sea and a garden(also on pilotis) facing west into the open sea. (‘Three star’ hotels - what I meant in 1991 - were unlike the Hiltons and Sheratons located nearby for the very rich tourists. Tel-Aviv always lacked the more modest hotels, which are neither ostentatious or unpleasant, but civilized and attractive. Today they are known as boutique hotels.)

The promenade then took you further to an open-air theatre as the third northern part, looking towards the Old city of Jaffa above the port, in the south.

The extension of the seafront promenade into the sea territory is one of the projects where I treated the design as an integral part of the landscape, where its environment became part of the architecture; observed from it, framed by it, lived with and through it.

One is looking for the intensity of the wholeness of a site that includes whatever the eye can see and the soul can feel. I wrote in January 1998 for an entry in the June issue of Fisuras:

“The extension of the seafront promenade into sea territory is where I treat the landscape, or the Environment, as Total Architecture, and when I say that, I transfer a common expression from the art world to that of architecture. To be more explicit I will say that Environment as Total-Architecture refers to architecture that fills, or relates to the entire room, or to the entire view of the given territory; this could be an architectural work within an open landscape or within an urban context, like in Las Vegas 3 or the old Pakistani village, Hyderabad Bind…….the vast open landscape of the sea and its infiniteness are very seductive to interfere with. Rising above the horizon are dramatic lines, curved strips and undulating surfaces enhancing the sense of movement, sometimes slow, calm and lazy, other times, light, quick and dynamic, introducing constant change.''

The slow, constant change of the environment I created in the extended promenade will be observed, sensed and interacted with by the people, while walking through and moving around and along the extended promenade into the sea. As they move, their viewpoint will change slightly and forms and spaces would constantly alter in shape. By day, sunlight would reveal a texture of light and shadow. Light surfaces will alternate with dark surfaces, creating a vibrant, ever-changing condition. The curved elements are all soft and continuous in order to complement the relaxation and calmness of the Mediterranean beach-goers. At night, some lines and surfaces are strips of artificial light, throwing light onto the sea; light is projected onto the sea as in full-moon-lit nights, or by the intermittent pulses of light from airplanes arriving and descending into Tel Aviv (all flights to Israel arrive from the west: the only free ‘frontier’) that reveal the sea in the darkness. These lights transform the beach and the promenade into a place of intensified pleasure. Every day during the sunset the new extended promenade will become a set of silhouettes. For some people, these will be the most intense moments of the day, when the dynamic change in its visual qualities over the space of each 24 hours make these moments even more exciting.

The notion of ‘the space in between’, an old favourite of mine, is a domineering one, created by different strips that ‘capture the empty air’. The Smithsons, in 1974, phrased this in poetic terms:

“The most mysterious, the most charged with architectural forms are those which capture the empty air…such forms are double acting, concentrating inwards, radiating buoyancy outwards…”

A hundred years earlier, it was Alphand, in his proposals for the ‘Parc des Buttes-Chaumont’, who laid out in an abandoned quarry where, along the ridge of a mountain, he planted trees with gaps between them. (Jean-Charles-Adolphe Alphand, who helped transform the Bois de Boulogne and other parks for Baron Haussmann in the middle of the 19th century.) Its plan and elevations were published in Paris in 1869, in a widely circulated magazine ‘les Promenades de Paris’. ( Adams, William Howard, Roberto Burle Marx, ‘The Unnatural Art of the Garden’, The museum of modern art, New York,1991)

The first time I saw the ‘Comb of the Wind’ in San Sebastian, Spain, by Eduardo Chilida, I knew I was not the only who is enjoying playing with the same theme.

It is clear to me that this project was a conscious and meaningful move on my part as an architect, with a passion of mine consciously becoming my architectural preoccupation which in turn became my architecture’s content.

Photo of the original model, 1991.

The original scaled model - about 1.5m x 2m -, dusty and broken, found ten years later in the attic, and sadly thrown to the bin.

In Year 2004

The exhibition in 1991 opened a public discussion that changed my attitude towards the location of such a project.

I was convinced by the Tel-Avivians that ‘their’ horizon line while walking from Tel-Aviv Port in the North all the way to Jaffa Port in the South, shouldn’t be changed but left as is.

I accepted the strong nostalgic feel or the existing set of memories for the Sea and its everlasting open horizon.

Nevertheless, I thought at the time, as now, in 2004, that the best location to enter the Sea and intervene with its beauty, would be any where - along the yet un developed strip of Tel-Aviv - from the Yarkon river and the power station Reading, all the way to the very Northern territories of Tel Aviv, arriving at the Herzelia.

Tel-Baruch Beach could be the starting point of that New Sea Promenade.

That sea promenade and such kind, could lead and bridge further into the Artificial Islands. Two Artificial Islands are in plan to be built in the Sea of Tel-Aviv.

It would be a new fascinating horizon looking at the beautiful sea and sky changing constantly in front of us while intervening with the charged sunsets through the artificially built silhouettes; an extraordinary set of views towards a built archipelago…One can be encouraged by looking at cities like Stockholm with their natural archipelago, and realize how promising it can become.

These Sea developments would be the future territories of Tel-Aviv to expend to, and an opportunity to create a different urban tissue over there.

And last note: As we all know, the Sand of our beaches; the unique white sand along the Eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea, is coming from deep Africa carried by the Nile River, up to the city of Haifa.

Nature is sometimes generous and doesn’t recognize political conflicts.

Most probably the Palestinians in Gaza strip would build their artificial islands in time to come, because of this tempting solution for shortage of land, and thus Israeli beaches might all disappear as a respond to the change of the sea currents due to these new islands.

We would better invest in advance searching how to keep the Israeli white Beaches, and finding solutions that would help preventing the sand’s disappearance.

It’s only then that we would be able to enjoy the beautiful North Tel-Avivian man- made Archipelago that might be built between the NorthernTel Aviv Port and Tel-Baruch Beach, extending a newly designed promenade into the Sea.

Yael Reisner, architect, July 2004.

Photoshop, 2004.

All the visuals by Yael Reisner.