Architecture of Israel

Byzantine churches, Crusader castles, Islamic madrasas, Templer houses, Arab arches and minarets, Russian Orthodox onion domes, International Style modernist buildings, sculptural concrete Brutalist architecture, and glass-sided skyscrapers all are part of the architecture of Israel.

Ancient regional architecture can be divided into two phases based on building materials — stone and sundried mud brick.

[1] After the Hellenistic period, hard limestone was used for columns, capitals, bases or also the Herodian enclosure walls of the Temple Mount.

While much innovative planning occurred during the time of the British Mandatory authorities, 1920–1948, in particular the town plan for Tel Aviv in 1925 by Patrick Geddes, it would be architecture designed in the modernist "Bauhaus" style that would fill the plots of that plan; among the architects who emigrated to Palestine at that time, and who went on to establish formidable careers were: Yehuda Magidovitch, Shmuel Mestechkin (1908-2004; specialised in kibbutz architecture),[3] Lucjan Korngold (1897-1963; Poland and Brazil; the Rubinsky House, an early Le Corbusier-style building in Tel Aviv, is often misattributed to him),[4][5][6] Jacob (Jacques, Jacov) Ornstein (1886-1953), Salomon Gepstein (1882-1961), Josef Neufeld (1899–1980) and Elsa Gidoni (1899–1978; née Mandelstamm).

[10] Dora Gad designed the interiors of the Knesset, the Israel Museum, the country's first large hotels, the Jewish National and University Library, El Al planes and Zim passenger ships.

In the 1950s and 1960s, brutalist style architecture was exemplified by the Tamar cinema built inside the historic Solel Boneh building on Tel Aviv's Allenby Street.

[dubious – discuss][citation needed] Housing built during the British Mandate was urban in character, with flat roofs, rectangular doorways and painted floor tiles.

[20] In the 1950s and 1960s, Israel built rows of concrete tenements to accommodate the masses of new immigrants living in the temporary tents and tin shacks of the maabarot, some of these were known as "rakevet" or train in Hebrew due to their relative monotony and length.

The Brutalist concrete style suited Israel's harsh climate and paucity of natural building materials.

Although they are being gradually remodeled as part of the TAMA 38 [he] program which is meant to strengthen old buildings against earthquakes or completely demolished and replaced with more modern housing projects occupying the former site as part of the "pinui binui [he]" (evacuate and build) program, it is expected to take decades before this style of architecture completely disappears from Israel's cities.