The working day has been given a playful twist by Israeli designer Sarit Shani Hay, who has created an indoor programme for the children of employees at an Israeli software company.

Hay’s indoor playground on the 15th floor of a Tel Aviv skyscraper, spanning 180 sq m, reflects the company’s aim to welcome employees back to the workplace after the pandemic normalised hybrid working. The playground, suitable for children aged one to ten, incorporates motifs from nature to create a sense of wellbeing for both children and parents. 

Floor-to-ceiling windows with views over Tel Aviv create a bright space for a hammock, a climbing wall and a treehouse. A muted colour palette nods to minimalist Nordic principles, broken up by blue and green hues and tree-like wooden posts. Energy-efficient lighting and a focus on clean space enable a warm, inviting atmosphere, while a juxtaposition of textures, from a gridded volume with cubby-hole storage to sliding wood cubes for climbing on, invites exploration. 

Plywood and flame-retardant materials are carefully considered in the space also invested with cast rubber, for shock absorption, across sections of the floor. Helpful additions avoid the need to interrupt parents, with a kitchen for preparing snacks and a café area where employees can spend their breaks with their children included in the space.

shanihay.com

Located on the city's coveted ‘Golden Mile', a stretch of seafront chock full of aspirational architecture and a cool, urban vibe, this Tel Aviv apartment lacks not in striking wide vistas that bring together modern design and the calming, blue waters of the Mediterranean. Featuring a contemporary apartment interior design created by architect Alex Meitlis, this family home also has plenty to offer when it comes to internal views too. The concept bridges classic minimalism, where a pared-down decor allows the eye and mind to rest, and a dash of glamour, through its refined material palette, art and furniture selection. 

Meitlis, who is currently based between London and Tel Aviv, but grew up in the latter and has strong, first-hand experience of the Israeli city's bright light and seafront views, drew on its natural surroundings and Mediterranean tones for his design. Light colours, reflective surfaces and large windows that open up to long and wide views were crucial in his concept. At the same time, the architect added a ‘cinematic quality', aiming to create a space the evolves during the course of the day and is dynamic as light and shade travel across the interior. 

There are shimmering white marble floors, white plaster walls and a handful of brass panelled surfaces that turn golden when the sun hits them. This movement and energy is balanced by the calmness brought about by the sleek, crisp white surfaces, minimalist approach in shapes, colours and decor, and an overall highlighly refined detailing and atmosphere. Meanwhile, black marble bathrooms contrast the openness and lightness of the living spaces, cocooning the user. 

Carefully chosen furniture such as the Eames dining chairs and an Italian midcentury lamp in the dining room, are complemented by specially made pieces, making this a truly bespoke and highly crafted piece of interior design.

Located high in the 28-storey The David Promenade Residences tower, this Tel Aviv apartment is a sculptural and dynamic piece of interior architecture, its clever, high-end design enhancing its impressive setting and signature seafront views.

INFORMATION

alexmeitlis.com

Once known for its warren of dusty, languid backstreets, today Jaffa is a hotbed of development, as time-worn buildings increasingly find new life as design-led hotels. With just 10 rooms, and occupying an Ottoman-era former private residence, Elmina is the latest.

Taking its name from the Arabic word for port, the hotel is a study in the changing face of the neighbourhood – with room interiors by Michael Azoulay that fuse Art Deco, British Mandate-period references with tidy, timely notes; its history of travel and trade manifest in African textiles and dazzlingly printed rugs.

Equally layered in aesthetic is the Ron Arad-designed rooftop bar and lounge, that features woven furniture handmade by Senegalese artisans – a collaboration between Arad and Italian label, Moroso.

Elmina’s distinctive, story-driven branding and identity was devised by Ark Visual and Dov Kroll - the sharp curves seen throughout inspired by the property’s historic window arches and Jaffa’s fierce, orange hued sunsets informing the colour palette.

ADDRESS

9 Shimon Ben Shetach St
Jaffa
Tel Aviv
Israel

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

On a clear day you can see the Jerusalem hills from the roof garden of the Jaffa Penthouse. Turn to the north and you’ll notice the modern ivory buildings that gave Tel Aviv its nickname, the White City. Pivot further and you can watch the sun fall clear into the Mediterranean, past a palm-lined beach.

These sweeping views and the 5,500-year-old timeline they represent inspired the design of this 1,500-square-metre apartment in the ancient, multi-ethnic enclave of Jaffa. Local practice Baranowitz Goldberg and Israeli architect Pitsou Kedem used warm Mediterranean stone and marble to construct a space with sweeping views from end to end, interrupted by sculptural dividers resembling megaliths.

The rooftop terrace may be the crowning glory of this property, currently on the market for US$65 million, but the journey there is quite a ride. Downstairs the architects have built out from the pared-back envelope with vast banks of wood and marble, pleated and sliced like modernist paper-cuts. Partitions crack apart like ruins; louvre-shaped travertine pillars cast shadows like sails on a dhow; a sinuous spiral staircase mimcs the intrepid rounded corners of Tel Aviv’s celebrated Bauhaus buildings. These non-walls allow a steady flow of light – and people – to bypass, even into the peek-a-boo master bedroom.

Opportunities to develop property in this prehistoric Mediterranean port come along rarely. The prolific developer Aby Rosen took over the original building, a French malaria hospice from the 19th century, and financed its restoration with plans for a luxury hotel on the site. In the process, workers discovered a 13th-century crusaders’ bastion. The hotel, simply called The Jaffa, took a decade to complete. The penthouse completed late last year.

The apartment’s neutral palette echoes the heat, dunes and sandstone that define the landscape. Furnishings by Carl Hansen, B&B Italia and De Padova are a natural accompaniment. Drifting from one seating area to the next mimics the experience of exploring the cool alleyways in the old city. Then you turn around to gaze out the full-height windows. The view, like looking down from a mountain, is biblical.

INFORMATION

pitsou.com; baranowitz-goldberg.com

Off a tree-lined street in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek neighbourhood, The Levee is a 1913 villa reborn as a smart urban stay, featuring eight sprawling apartments and a 24-hour concierge.

The meticulous renovation from Bar Orian Architects sees original concrete details exposed – intended to evoke the Japanese wabi-sabi notion, in which beauty is found in austere imperfection. In places, fragments of sea shell can still be seen buried in the century-old cement, made from sand sourced on the city’s shores. 

Israeli-Belgian designer Yael Siso oversaw the loft-like interiors, which mix contrasting materials like marble and velvet, brass and sandstone. In the furnishings she adopted an international outlook, tapping the likes of Molteni, Cassina, Moooi and Moroso. Yet the aesthetic is ultimately rooted in Tel Aviv. The sense of diverse references is redolent of the wider city - best viewed, of course, from the panoramic windows of the swish, rooftop-spanning penthouse.

ADDRESS

16 Yehuda Halevi

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture has long been a draw for design devotees, who travel to the Israeli city to see the some 4,000 Bauhaus-style buildings that were built there from the 1930s onwards. Designed by German-Jewish architects who immigrated to the region to escape the Nazi regime, the white plaster apartment buildings have been attracting increased interest in recent decades – particularly since 2004, when Tel Aviv was declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site and approximately 1200 buildings were listed for preservation.

‘The city followed and established policies and categories of preservation in order to encourage their renovations, retrofits and extensions,’ explains local architect Avital Gourary, who believes that the continued popularity of the Bauhaus buildings is down to their modest architectural language. ‘What followed is that investors, developers, architects and designers took an integral part of what the city is going to become. It created many opportunities.

Gourary, who runs Tel Aviv firm AN + alongside architect Natanel Elfassy, recently restored a 1930s building in Neve Tzedek, one of the city's oldest districts. The 600 sq m property was snapped up ten years ago by Bauhaus enthusiast and hospitality entrepreneur Mati Broudo, who fell in love with the location. The renovation process saw the architects empty the centre of the building and carve it into three apartments and two studios.

Now it is the home of local hospitality entrepreneur Mati Broudo.

‘We introduced a new stairwell, which was a major characteristic of the modern movement,' explains Gourary. ‘It appears on the façade as a glazed wall that's nicknamed the "thermometer window". Our aim was to give back the stairwell its social and environmental importance that used to exist in the time these buildings were built.

‘Thanks to a skylight above and the fact that it's open to the exterior on one side, the stairwell also functions as a patio. This light-flooded indoor/outdoor space connects the entrance, the apartments, the backyard, and the roof garden. ‘The patio is the place where people meet, feel the breeze, and interact with the neighbours,' says Gourary.

Inside the apartments, the interiors are designed as open plan spaces that cleverly merge social and private spaces while providing a level of separation. For example, bedrooms are visually separated by sliding walls or split levels, but remain part of the living spaces. 

The White City of Tel Aviv has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site due to its large concentration of Bauhaus architecture.

Keen to retain the building's original character, the architects spent a great deal of energy mapping out the relationship between old and new. The outlines of the old structure's windows, for instance, are reproduced onto the new inner facades of the patio allowing views into the surrounding spaces, public or private.

‘Our intention was to create the most intelligent design possible, not the most spectacular one,' explains Gourary. ‘With the Broudo House we wanted to show that with small architectural intervention you can turn an existing building, into a new piece of architecture. Not because it will necessarily be more beautiful but because our act will clearly express an intention of turning the existing building into something new. That's what we called "Rethinking Bauhaus".'

Explore more Bauhaus coverage here

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the AN + website

Billed as Israel’s first chef accelerator dining destination, L28 Culinary Platform is a novel rethink of the traditional restaurant.

With a perpetually evolving programme, budding chefs are given residencies of six months to showcase their originality and skill, and afforded full creative licence to develop their own menu concept.Taking the reins for the restaurant’s launch is Galilee born-and-raised Shuli Wimer, who honed her craft at London’s acclaimed River Café.

Designed by Kimmel Eshkolot Architects, L28 occupies the ground floor of the Start-Up Nation Central HQ, an NGO on a mission to connect the world with Israeli innovation. In the heart of the city, it’s a majestic, double height space that tells a story of modern Tel Aviv. Here the industrial and natural embrace, as polished concrete walls are combined with sharp wooden strands that fall from the ceiling in wave-like forms, while a vegetation wall sidles up to the black-steel-framed open kitchen.

ADDRESS

28 Lilenblum Street

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

As you might expect of Wallpaper’s Designer of the Year, Pierre Yovanovitch has had a busy 12 months. Besides chairing the jury for the third International Festival of Interior Architecture in Toulon, including his masterful curation of L’Erotonomanie de Mademoiselle Oops, Yovanovitch has completed residences in London, Brussels, Paris and Tel Aviv, too. Sitting out the drearier days of winter, it is the latter that we are particularly enamoured of.

The 200 sq m apartment, on the 16th floor of a new residential tower in the south of Tel Aviv, is a fantasy seaside city escape. The owners are a French couple working in fashion (return clients of Yovanovitch), and you sense they’ve had fun creating something bold together. ‘A second project means more trust,’ explains Yovanovitch, ‘hence the possibility to make bolder proposals. The client is a fairly radical personality, yet the result here is more radical than our previous work. The main reason is Tel Aviv: if one is not going to be bold in Tel Aviv, where can one possibly be bold?’

Yovanovitch took on the project before the building was completed and remodelled the layout to suit the practical needs of his clients. This meant opening up the floorplan to create a generous kitchen, dining and living area, with two en suite bedrooms, all connected by a 16-metre long corridor. Curtain windows look out over the beach and the sea on one side and the city on another. Linen curtains diffuse the intense light, creating an ethereal atmosphere throughout, which is grounded by Yovanovitch’s deft and generous use of natural materials.

‘We wanted to add rawness and roughness,’ he explains, pointing to the grey Ceppo stone flooring and the shockingly red travertine wall that lines the corridor. ‘I always look for texture, and increasingly, colour. These two components allow one to draw simple, rigorous lines and achieve a striking result. I used stone, wood, ceramic – raw materials with personality.’ A subtle warmth is evident in the handcraft that Yovanovitch accentuates in his approach, particularly in the custom elements his studio designed: the carved oak headboard, a circular chestnut sofa, a pivoting wall lamp and ceramic petal sconces.

Yovanovitch is a particularly courageous curator. His custom designs are interspersed with exquisite midcentury pieces spanning Italy, France, Scandinavia and the US, by Ponti, Perriand, Ditzel, Tynell and Nakashima, to name a handful. They reinforce the warmth of craft and the texture of time through their patina. A striking wall piece by German artist Imi Knoebel animates the dining area, while custom hand-knotted rugs add pools of softness underfoot.

There is a confidence in Yovanovitch’s playfulness, which makes for wonderfully light-hearted interiors that are simultaneously robust and enigmatic. Porky Hefer’s woven nest, comically perched on legs between the dining table and the balcony, is a case in point. And yet this is no gimmick; Yovanovitch’s genius lies in rooting everything carefully and poetically in the human experience. ‘When you lie in the nest after a meal and fall asleep,’ he explains, ‘you wake up and see only the sky and the sea from your perch.'

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Pierre Yovanovitch website

The Jaffa

  A 19th century, neo-Roman former hospital turned lavish hotel, The Jaffa is the kind of titanic, rambling property that begs to be explored. A new wing was added to the historic building during renovation to increase the footprint dramatically, creating a tree-festooned private courtyard from which runs a New York Italian restaurant, Jewish deli and smart pool area. Designer John Pawson’s sharp, minimalist style is a forceful counterpoint to the traditional architecture. In the lobby, a 13th-century Crusader wall meets mid-century furnishings from Shiro Kuramata and Pierre Paulin, along with artwork from Damien Hirst.  

www.thejaffahotel.com.

4 Louis Pasteur Street, Tel Aviv, Israel; 

Tel: 972.3 516 200; 

Rates from: $500

Brown Beach House 

While Tel Aviv’s beaches are arguably the liveliest in the Middle East, the city’s promenade was once dominated by soulless hotel chains with drearily uniform façades. Among the first to shake things up, Brown Beach House brought a boutique sensibility to the coast, with playful branding and eye-catchingly graphic interiors – from Elin Langlieb and Leopard Hospitality. Classic resorts of the 1950s provided the initial inspiration, and even though there’s a dash of Miami and a sip of The French Riviera in the design, the volume has been notched up to reflect Tel Aviv’s altogether more boisterous spirit. 

www.brownhotels.com.

64 Ha’Yarkon Street, Tel Aviv, Israel;

 Tel: 972.3 760 5000; 

 Rates from: $167

The Drisco

 With its Ottoman inspired interiors, The Drisco veers from the unrelentingly hip mid-century and modernist styles more generally seen in Tel Aviv. Boldly patterned rugs, preserved oriental tiles and original murals evoke something of a bygone age – fitting, considering the hotel’s storied past. Built by Evangelist pilgrims in the late 1800s, it once played host to the likes of Mark Twain and Thomas Cook as the region’s most splendid stay. Over a decade’s work from architect and designer Ari Shaltiel has seen the hotel returned to its former glory, with 37 rooms, five suites and an ambient lobby bar. 

4-6 Auerbach Street, Tel Aviv, Israel; 

Tel: 972.3 741 0000, 

 Rates from: $230

www.thedrisco.com.

Hotel Saul

 A 1940s office building turned millennial minded boutique, the 34-bedroom Hotel Saul is as much a neighbourhood hangout as a youthful bolthole. Its ground floor features Tel Aviv’s first gourmet ‘sandwicherie’, Barvazi, while the fourth floor terrace is a space to kick back and make use of the board games on offer. So far, so retro. Dan Troyim’s whimsical interiors knit together flashes of decorative kitsch with handsome walnut furniture, while whitewashed brick walls play canvas to lolling pot plants. And if there’s any remaining doubt as to the joint’s target demo, rooms feature Netflix and buckets of popcorn to order. 

17 Tschernichowski Street, Tel Aviv, Israel; 

Tel: 972.3 527 7700, 

Rates from: $115

www.hotelsaul.com.

Lily & Bloom 

An ode to Bauhaus and a tale of Tel Aviv given form, Lily & Bloom draws together the dual personalities of the city – on the one hand modernity, in the shape of the fictitious Ms Lily, and on the other, classic refinement, embodied by Mr Bloom. The 37-room boutique, and former 1930s bank, represents a compelling love affair between the two. Studio MU’s design incorporates period elements, such as the bank’s original safe, to hammer home a sense of history, while contemporary touches include specially commissioned mezuzas with Marc Chagall artwork, and handmade Italian furniture. 

48 Lilienblum Street, Tel Aviv, Israel; 

Tel: 972.72 248 4848; 

Rates from: $190

www.lilyandbloom.com.

Poli House

 Situated on the frenzied Magen David Square and just metres from the raucous market stalls of Shuk HaCarmel, Poli House is an exercise in energetic aesthetics. It’s the first project from renowned designer Karim Rashid in the city, and his brazen signature style abounds in every bulbous, neon coloured piece of furniture and serpentine architectural line. Featuring 40 rooms and suites, the renovated Bauhaus building is now the square’s most defining structure, and on a typical weekend the throbbing music and crowd-chatter from its destination rooftop bar is enough to cut through the din of the traffic below. 

1 Nahalat Binyamin Street, Tel Aviv, Israel; 

Tel: 972.3 710 5000;

Rates from: $170

www.thepolihouse.com. 

The Norman 

Tel Aviv’s Nachmani Street, in the heart of the White City, sees neat low-rise buildings huddle behind bowing trees. Despite the proximity to Rothschild Boulevard, here the frenetic urban pace slows to a gentle stroll. This more languid air runs through The Norman, with its wooden ceiling fans, gentle light and flickering curtains. Sagrada’s David d’Almada is responsible for the nostalgic design, drawing upon a romanticised 1920s. Statement light pieces from Collier Webb throw great curving shadows across the grand public spaces while the 30 bedrooms and 20 suites feature an artfully discordant assembly of prints and daring colours. 

www.thenorman.com.

23-25 Nachmani Street, Tel Aviv, Israel;

 Tel: 972.3 543 5555; 

 Rates from: $550

The Lighthouse 

While the Brown Hotels group is known for its bijou but characterful properties, The Lighthouse represents its largest project to date – a 100-room, Brutalist-style tower block that looms over the bustling Allenby Street. But though bigger in stature than Brown’s other digs, the trademark charm remains. Leon Avigad – co-founder of the group – partnered with local architect Nestor Sandbank on the design. It’s a riot of carefully curated peculiarity. A birdcage swing in the lobby entices guests to shirk off their inhibitions and dimly lit hallways are emblazoned with flashes of flamingo pink and marigold. 

Migdalor Tower, 1 Ben Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv, Israel;

 Tel: 972.3 974 7045, 

 Rates from: $170

www.brownhotels.com. 

The Setai

 Once an Ottoman prison, today there are few who would complain about a stint in The Setai. Although it bears an initial similarity to the nearby The Jaffa – both renovations of deeply historic buildings, bolstered by contemporary architectural additions – venture inside and a markedly different vision unfolds. ARA Design leaned heavily on period influences, with Arabesque motifs, Turkish rugs and light fittings with ornately tessellated grills – a staple of Islamic design. The hotel’s restaurant and bar blend contemporary Israeli food culture with traditional Turkish elements – the latter dressed with bespoke Brazilian blue marble conceived by local architecture studio, Baranowitz & Kronenberg. 

22 David Raziel Street, Tel Aviv, Israel,

 Tel: 972.3 601 6000;

 Rates from: $520

www.thesetaihotel.co.il. 

The Vera 

A 39-room boutique close to artistic Neve Tzedek and hip Florentin, The Vera manages to marry the industrial with the comfortable, seducing guests with its feeling of cosseted privacy – the natty wraparound courtyard alone is a pocket of ease in an otherwise unruly metropolis. Inside, polished concrete and unplastered walls are made friendly with soft seating, plush rugs and stacks of photography tomes that invite visitors to linger. Yaron Tal Studio led the interiors charge, and guestrooms are a pithy combination of black and grey. The dual-level rooftop, meanwhile, is a terrific spot from which to take in the nearby Shalom Meir, Israel’s first skyscraper. 

www.theverahotel.com.

27 Lilienblum Street, Tel Aviv, Israel;

 Tel: 972.3 778 3800; 

 Rates from: $190

With its glut of plant-based eateries and decidedly veg-focused population, Tel Aviv has been called the vegan capital of the world. But even with over 400 vegan joints in the city, Opa restaurant represents a vision as fresh as Chef Shirel Berger’s acclaimed fare.

Located in the scruffy-but-hip Levinksy Market, Opa’s curt, modernist façade is a departure from the tumbledown grocery shops and wholesale stores that otherwise dominate. With its combination of glass and dry wall it’s ‘more art gallery than restaurant', says Craft & Bloom’s Emma Shahar, who partnered with architect Vered Kadouri on the design.

Inside, the style draws from Berger’s cuisine – clean, minimal and locally sourced. Neutral plaster walls and buffed concrete flooring play canvas to restrained furnishings, with ceramics by Telavivi makers Merav Waldman and Leehee of Out Wandering, while neat decorative lights were designed by Craft & Bloom and made in Jaffa. A discreet inner patio, painted in white, is fashioned from Hevron stone – hand cut just 25 minutes outside the city. 

The relative simplicity of the interiors articulates a clear, but quietly told, story of provenance, central to Opa’s ethos. Chef Berger – who formerly headed the kitchen at Sarona Market’s now defunct Miss Kaplan – sources from a single, family-run farm 40-minutes north of Tel Aviv, working with seasonal produce to create dishes that are intended to please the eye as much as the palate. Macadamia milk is combined with sourdough crumb; dehydrated Dijon mustard with mint and lemon zest; and oyster mushrooms with crispy tapioca, in a menu that delivers an inspired take on vegan cuisine, even by the standards of its capital.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

8 Ha-Khalutzim Street

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

At ground level, it is Tel Aviv’s neat rows of bright white Bauhaus buildings that feel most indicative of this metropolis on the Mediterranean. The serrated skyline meanwhile, is dominated by vast contemporary shards of glass and steel. Slightly at odds with both is the Migdalor – or Lighthouse – tower, a 16-storey, 1970s office block that, until recently, was wallowing in grim disrepair. But as is now frequently the case in a newly booming city, a bright young hotelier stepped forth to drag the Brutalist-style building back from the brink, and reimagine it as a sprightly, design-led hotel.

The Lighthouse is the latest opening from Brown Hotels and, with 100 guestrooms and suites (rising to 160 in phase two), its largest project to date by some stretch. The group’s co-founder Leon Avigad partnered with local architect Nestor Sandbank on the interiors – a curated vision of peculiarity and whimsy.

Rather fitting for a building that is itself something of an outsider, there’s little by way of understatement. A birdcage swing hangs in the lobby, antlers are mounted on walls and on the colour front, flashes of flamingo pink and marigold bring a sense of vitality to moodily-lit hallways.

Bedrooms are larger than average for the city, and some feature vast terraces with outdoor Jacuzzis, garden walls and clear views to the Mediterranean Sea or panoramic vistas of the Tel Aviv skyline.

With an Israeli-centric food offer, guests can make use of a fifth floor restaurant specialising in fish and dairy. While for those who prefer to keep the party going, Brown Hotels have also partnered with local events group, ARIA, on a slew of in-house nightlife options – including a rooftop bar that is the new shining light atop this thankfully revived lighthouse, ensuring guests are unlikely to run aground on the treacherous shores of boredom.

ADDRESS

Migdalor Tower
1 Ben Yehuda St

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Hidden behind an unassuming gate on a small, cobbled street in the old city of Jaffa, just five minutes walk from the new John Pawson-designed hotel, The Jaffa, is the wellness centre Yoko Kitahara, named after its eponymous owner.

What was two 500-year-old Ottoman-era homes, is now a stripped back, serene ‘house of treatment’ with five peaceful treatment rooms and a retail space, where guests are invited to enjoy what Kitahara describes as a ‘minimalist and accurate experience’.

The building, which features expressive, vaulted ceilings, smooth tiled floors and walls finished with a traditional mix of clay and sand in the softest natural shades, feels entirely rooted in its local history and architectural vernacular. Yet with Kitahara’s own subtle hand applied to the interior design, there’s an immediate sense of her Japanese heritage: humble, respectful, unadorned, but with added vintage elements, such as a pair of Eames chairs, a Scandinavian coffee table, and low-key lighting.

A tearoom with a bespoke Tatami mat made in Kyoto, looks out to the sea. A quiet soundtrack, a subtle waft of incense, an invitation to take Japanese tea and soak one’s feet in an ashiyu wooden bath prior to treatments, ensure every sense is gently engaged.

Kitahara moved from Japan to Tel Aviv 13 years ago and began practising her own type of massage, which blends both eastern and western techniques, drawing upon traditional Shiatsu and Swedish massage. This wellness centre, which opened in October 2017, offers a compact and effective treatment list including the house massage Hogushi Aroma – Hogushi means ‘to release and open’ in Japanese – as well as facials and a body scrub. All products used are organic.

‘We try to make a treatment flow, it’s more of a philosophy of how to treat the people and to connect with nature,’ explains Kitahara. ‘That’s really important for me – to give more. We use a lot of breathing techniques between therapist and client. The use of aromatherapy and essential oils, hot towels, changing the temperature – it’s like a voyage of relaxation. We want people to come and enjoy it in a very simple way’.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Yoko Kitahara website

ADDRESS

Kikar Kdumim 5
Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

San Francisco and Tel Aviv-based architecture and design studio Axelrod has renovated an apartment in the 1934 Zamenhof Clinic building in Tel Aviv. The former medical building designed in Bauhaus-style, like many of the buildings in the neighbourhood, underwent a transformation into a residential complex with much of the original interior architecture retained.

Axelrod’s job was to bring definition and domesticity to the 200 sq m, irregularly shaped shell. Principal architect Irit Axelrod led the design, choosing to embrace original features of the building such as the rough concrete ceiling that was left exposed, as well as a heavy structural pillar and the electricity and air-con ducts.

Balancing this preservation of the architecture’s commercial character, careful attention was paid to the remaining surfaces across the apartment. Herringbone oak flooring by Dilegno brought warmth, stain-painted concrete walls brought a softer more finished texture, while glass, custom cabinetry and black steel partitions developed the identity of the space.

A free-standing container with a black steel patina finish that floats in the middle of the open plan space solved the practicalities of the design. It hides an en suite bathroom, guest bathroom and powder room, storage and a laundry room. Meanwhile, its exterior hosts a bespoke shelving system for the display of the client’s books and art, and tucked into the container’s fourth side is a neat office desk.

Across the whole loft, clever use of lighting shapes the space, creating a continuous aesthetic through wiring, fixed lights and over-sized lamps by ViaBizzuno and David Groppi.

The master and guest bedrooms are located on the other side of the container, separated by a custom-made two-sided wardrobe above which a glass wall extends to the ceiling to create a light partition, that adds to the spacious aesthetic of the loft. Sliding doors neatly extend from the wardrobes, to close off the bedrooms for privacy when required.

Stainless steel DaDa kitchen islands and aluminium grey cabinets reflect light across the space while continuing the industrial look. In the heart of the space around which daily life revolves, Eames dining chairs, a Vitra lounge chair and sofa by Living Divani further set the Bauhaus scene.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Axelrod website

A former office building from the 1940s has been reinvented as Hotel Saul, a thoroughly modern addition to Tel Aviv’s boutique hotel scene.

Named after the great Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichovsky, this 34-room-bolthole chronicles the city’s compact but colourful history. The ornamental grandeur of the art deco period is alluded to with brass tiles; further nostalgia is incorporated with restored street lamps, vintage balcony railings, and wood panelling.

Yet don’t be fooled into thinking this is a heritage-style property. Architect Dan Troyim has catered to design-conscious urbanites with a decidedly contemporary interior that contrasts whitewashed brick walls and exposed concrete against the sleek lines of walnut furniture. While the pared back furnishings are pure bachelor pad, homely splashes of colour are added by framed geometric prints, the verdant leaves of a potted plant, and the smoky blue of handwoven Turkish linen.

Hotel Saul takes its commitment to millennial creature comforts seriously. Swing by the Barvazi cafe in the lobby for gourmet sandwiches with home-smoked meats and cheeses, or head to the fourth floor for board games. Should a ‘Netflix and chill’ night be in order, there’s an in-room account, plus Nintendo and Playstation games. Peckish? They’ll even deliver a bucket of popcorn to your door.

ADDRESS

Tchernikhovski St 17

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Jaffa, the oldest neighbourhood in modern-day Tel Aviv-Yafo, is famed as the port of departure in the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Today, cranes punctuate the skyline, scaffolding is as synonymous with the area as its golden cobbled streets, and there have long been gripes that Jaffa would eventually share a similar fate to the man in the tale and be swallowed up – in this case by glossy hotel and residential developments.

Thankfully, most recent projects have been sympathetic to the area’s historic character and distinct aesthetic, the latest being The Jaffa Tel Aviv, a 120-room luxury hotel and 32 residences – part of the Luxury Collection by Marriott – close to the district’s ancient centre.

A renovated 19th-century hospital combined with a substantial new-build, the hotel is a cross-continental collaboration: the original structure, crumbling and deserted, was purchased by US-based RFR Holding’s Aby Rosen, who saw its potential and enlisted British designer John Pawson to help oversee its impressive transformation, with landscape design by Rees Roberts and Partners. ‘I’d invited John to Jaffa to study the property and its surroundings. He immediately picked up on the historical importance of the port; the textures, patterns and cultural diversity of the area,’ recalls Rosen. ‘He understood that I wanted the design of the hotel to reflect this extraordinary legacy.’ 

Along with local architect Ramy Gill, Pawson devised a scheme that would juxtapose contemporary and classic elements, and also designed the adjoining new building. The result sees grand Roman columns with Corinthian cornices branch, tree-like, above a minimalist marble reception desk in the lobby; ornate stained-glass windows throw pillars of mottled colour across austere furnishings; while outside, the façade of the old hospital, with its arched windows and sturdy architectural detailing, sits neatly beside the contemporary wing, with its robust, angular lines. Here, window boxes bring to mind an inventive new take on the classic mashrabiya, an apt reference to the area’s intrinsically Arab personality.

The hotel’s rooms, meanwhile, reflect the warm, neutral tones of Jaffa’s rampant stonework, and in the furniture there’s arguably a wink to the Bauhaus style for which wider Tel Aviv is renowned. And while the area is home to some of the city’s best eateries, guests will find a diverse collection of restaurants within The Jaffa, from a Jewish deli to a New York-style Italian. 

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

4 Louis Pasteur Street

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Flexibility and imaginative engineering meet at the building site for ToHA – a.k.a Totseret Ha-Aretz – in Tel Aviv. The new development, designed by Ron Arad, has been rising fast in the Israeli town, gearing up to make its mark on the city’s skyline.

The result of a joint venture between local developers Amot and Gav-Yam, the complex consists of two towers – one 28 storeys and the other 63 storeys high – which are situated next to each other on a common base of commercial facilities and a split-level planted and landscaped public space. Offices will occupy the upper floors, while two roof terraces at the top will host a number of restaurants and facilities open to the public. A sky bridge will connect the two towers.

Located a stone’s throw from the train station in the heart of Tel Aviv, the project stands out not just for its overall modern style and nature – the site was a rare opportunity for a new-build scheme in the centre of town – but also for its distinctive volume. The buildings’ eye-catching outline was carefully sculpted to negotiate various requirements, from lighting needs to several site constraints and local planning regulations.

Indeed, the structure is full of ingenious solutions, spearheaded by the team’s innovative thinking. Its unusual distribution of massing, stepped façade and the internal arrangement were key. ‘We refer to this as the upside-down building’, says Arad. ‘Plant and machinery are placed down below, freeing up the roof and upper levels for delight and enjoyment. We managed to achieve a seriously small footprint for such a large building, with “legs” that are sprouting from a lush park, rather than a shopping mall’. This gesture helps free up ground space for circulation to create a sense of space and avoid unnecessary density.

‘The lower technical levels are clad with a permeable façade of cross-mounted panels, creating an “X” pattern’, continue the architects. ‘This woven-like arrangement allows for plant facility ventilation, and provides a coherent aesthetic to the first seven floors of the building.’

Currently, construction is moving full steam ahead at the Tel Aviv building site, and the team aims to complete Phase 1 – the first tower – by the end of 2018. That is when construction will begin on the second and last phase, aiming for full completion of the second tower and surrounding landscaping by 2022.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Ron Arad website

Geographically The Vera sits neatly within touching distance of three of Tel Aviv’s most distinct areas: the grand stretch of Rothschild Boulevard, with its steely high rises; the artistic Neve Tzedek; and Florentin, the latest ‘hipster hood’, where locals ease into relaxed bars via elegantly faded facades.

In its design, overseen by Yaron Tal Studio, the 39-key boutique draws from each, blending sharp, considered modernity with a sense of put-your-feet-up ease. In the lobby-cum-bar, relaxed furnishings, a help-yourself wine machine and a scattering of curated coffee table books invite guests to linger. Raw, unplastered walls and polished concrete nod to the historic soul of the building, which – like so many others in the city – is a renovation project.

It is the first solo hotel from Danny Tamari, a native who cut his cloth working for the likes of Rocco Forte Hotels and Morgan’s Hotel Group, and in many ways it is his love letter to the city. Tamari’s idea was to create a ‘local anthology’: a project that showcases Tel Aviv’s fertile talent and speaks to a creative, idiosyncratic destination. Bespoke furniture comes from Tel Aviv-based designer Tomer Nachson, while Ohad Benit developed unique light fixtures. 

Guestrooms stick to a pithy combination of greys, white, black and brown, while on the dazzling dual-level rooftop, wood meets Mediterranean greenery. From here guests can gaze across to the handsome Shalom Meir Tower, an iconic 1960s skyscraper currently undergoing a facelift. It is the view of a city constantly reimagining itself – much like the view indoors. 

ADDRESS

Lilenblum 27

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Is there a place for modernism in our postmodern, post-everything age? Piero Lissoni thinks so. The Italian architect of purified forms, from sharp little coffee makers to lofty, linear edifices, has made a career of creating rigorously clean compositions with a foundation in the stark and immaculate works of the 20th century.

‘In 2018, it’s still possible to create architecture that is contemporary and simple, at least aesthetically simple, and to reclaim a little bit of that elegant modernist spirit,’ he announces, seated at a drawing table in his bright white Milan studio, surrounded by his three napping golden retrievers, as his dark-clad team works away at largescreen computers behind him. Lissoni, dressed Milanese-style, in a neat navy blazer with matching silk pocket square, speaks softly, but his black apostrophe eyebrows and hazel eyes dance when he puts forth an opinion.

The architect’s latest completed work, a residence in Tel Aviv designed in collaboration with the Israeli firm Tehila Shelef, is the very definition of crisply angled contemporary modernism. The entrance appears like a monolithic barricade, but on the inside, the two-storey home reveals itself as a dialogue between the external and the internal, with crystal-clear walls of glass that barely separate the airy, open space of the interiors from the lush greenery and limpid pools surrounding the house.

'My task was simply to make this house completely transparent in order to capture the light – to allow the residents to live inside but to feel like their existence is outside,’ says Lissoni. Screens of wood over the glass walls soften the heat of the Tel Aviv sun – both layers slide back, completely opening the house to the outdoors when desired. When the wooden grille is closed, the effect creates what Lissoni calls a fundamental ‘paso doble’ between the light and shadows cast inside.

The house was carefully laid out to embrace the local light and to mesh with the surrounding area, but despite its vernacular orientation, the project has a distinctly Milanese discretion. Before reaching the residence’s sunshine-filled interior, visitors face an entrance of looming blocks of stone, obscuring the treasures that lie within. ‘In Milan, our cultural DNA tells us, no matter how rich one might be, not to show off, so even the homes of the most important Milanese families are closed and imposing on the outside, but inside you find courtyards, gardens, frescos, colonnades – you find all the beauty,’ he says.

According to Lissoni, the house also expresses his Italian ‘humanistic’ approach, which he applies to every element of a project – from its initial visual impact to its interior, its garden and exterior, right down to the technical considerations needed to complete it. ‘The Anglo Saxon way is for an architect to design a house, but to leave the construction and functional aspects to an engineer and ask an interior decorator to make it feel like a home. If you’re an architect, you should know how to design absolutely every aspect,’ he says. ‘When you create a building, you need to design everything: the façade, but also the internal structure, the mechanical aspects. You need to design the veins and the nerves.’

Applying this sweeping approach to the Tel Aviv residence, Lissoni formulated the L-shaped, bi-level footprint of the house, the garden, the numerous pools, the advanced climate-control system – even the interiors and furnishings. He mixed a ‘cocktail’, as he says, of his own furniture designs and others he admires, along with antiques from China, Japan and Israel, and the owner’s personal art collection. The materials are ‘as neutral as possible’, he explains, and match a floor of local grey marble with whitewashed plastered walls and a dramatic black steel staircase, creating a museum-like coolness that underlines the calm efficiency of the home – a retreat from the heat and vigorous urban energy of Tel Aviv.

The greenery, designed together with local landscape architect Mohr Avidan, appears to grow from the structure itself in a vaguely formalised way. Vines sprout from crevices, buds poke through outdoor steps and long desert grasses cluster along the edges to soften the hard lines of the structure. Lissoni describes it as an ‘Italian garden’ (despite the Israeli plant varieties), because it is ‘artificially natural’ – planned, but seemingly unplanned and perfect in the Italian style.

The building’s visual purity belies the complexity of its design. Lissoni kept the pillars and supports in the lofty interiors to a bare minimum – despite the entire walls of sliding glass – and the house’s inner workings, those ‘veins and nerves’, are fantastically intricate, full of cutting-edge mechanisms in the floors, roofs and walls that remove heat from the air. Surrounded by a series of pools, the house seems to float on water, softening the effect of the hulking concrete blocks. Yet even the water is functional, with an elaborate evaporation system that cools the air and reduces energy use – a must in such a sun-warmed part of the world. ‘The architect’s duty is always to design a building but also to consider what a human being needs from the building,’ says Lissoni. ‘We make spaces for human beings, after all.

As originally featured in the April 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*229)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Lissoni Associati website

If only the walls could talk at The Setai, a property that’s been accommodating people for the last millennia. Located in the ancient port city of Jaffa on the southern fringes of Tel Aviv, the hotel pays homage to its fascinating – and sometimes brutal – history through distinctive design features and Ottoman-inspired decor. 

Over a 12-year renovation period, local firm Feigin Architects have carefully integrated archaeological features even as they added two floors and a new wing. Spectacular stone archways date back to its days as a Crusader fortress while spiked iron bars set atop heavy stone windows recall its use as a prison during the Ottoman era. Glance up to spot the royal seal of Abdul Hamid II – the last Sultan to rule with absolute authority before the empire crumbled – stamped in stone above the hotel entrance.

Building upon this legacy, ARA Design have created rich interiors that blend the tech-driven modernity of Tel Aviv with Jaffa-specific references. In each of the 120 rooms, traditional Turkish rugs and intricate, Arabic-inspired light fixtures nod to the hotel’s Middle Eastern heritage. A sunny central courtyard draws upon another tenet of Islamic design while, in the cavernous ground floor bar, jewel-coloured armchairs sit under a glittering chandelier. In the basement spa, a hammam awaits. 

ADDRESS

David Razi'el St 22

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Hotel Nordoy is a bit of a local treasure in Tel Aviv’s buzzy Nachlat Binyamin. Its beguiling façade – an eclectic marriage of rich dusky pink walls and striking silver dome – has been greeting visitors on the corner of Gruzenberg and Nahalat Binyamin since the hotel opened its doors in 1925. 

Years of service had up until recently left the hotel in a rather tired state, but thanks to a changing of the guard and meticulous restoration and renovation by the folks who introduced wonderfully quirky Cucu hotel to the city’s burgeoning boutique hotel landscape, Tel Aviv’s oldest hotel is back in the game. 

The newly relaunched Hotel Nordoy is a contemporary, intimate proposition of 20 smartly furnished rooms and suites, a rooftop lounge, spa and a soon-to-be-opened restaurant. 

Much of Hotel Nordoy’s charm lies in its original features and local architect Amnon Bar Or has overseen a sympathetic architectural restoration of the building to retain as many of them, including that of the main stairwell and the exact shade of pink that adorned the exterior walls almost 100 years ago.

Inside, contemporary East-meets-West interiors by designer Omer Leichter sees a warm palette of brown and nude sit alongside accents of gold, marble and leather in all the rooms. Guests can expect a curated selection of artworks on the walls, crisp white cotton bedding and Ahava toiletries from the Dead Sea.

ADDRESS

7 Nahalat Binyamin St

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Known as Israel’s cultural capital, Tel Aviv has an architectural identity that is a tale of two cities. The sun-drenched secular metropolis is loved internationally for its bohemian Bauhaus treasures, with some 4,000 historic buildings scattered across the broad, verdant boulevards of its White City district.

Then there’s its less recognised postmodern legacy: perhaps best summarised by the 34,500 sq m spacescape of the Azrieli Centre – its epic trifecta of towers completed by Eli Attia & Yaski Sivan Architects just shy of the millennium, reflecting all the futuristic optimism of the late 90s through its design.

This split personality is soothed by Jaffa, the historical port just south of the city that has now become the go-to destination for Tel Avivian nightlife entertainment. Countless clubs and 24-hour art venues like the new Magasin III are setting a new standard for the city’s late night culture junkies.

Meanwhile, Israel’s startup scene continues to flourish in the ‘Silicon Wadi’ tech cluster surrounding Tel Aviv. Venture capital-friendly tax breaks introduced during the 90s through Israel’s Yozma business incubator programme combine with the warm weather and high living standards to encourage a more or less steady stream of tech outposts in Tel Aviv.

Giants like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon get cosy with specialist groups like WeWork, drone safety startup ParaZero and VR darling Magic Leap, all of which have bought into multiple floors of upcoming tower projects including Ron Arad’s ToHA development, Pitsou Kedem’s C6 Tower and the 72-floor Sarona Tower which nears completion.

Tel Aviv’s endless blue skies may yet have found their match in the city’s vertical expansion.

C6 Tower
Architecture by MYS Architects and interiors by Pitsou Kedem
2019

Tel Avivian architectural mainstays MYS Architects join forces with designer-favorite Pitsou Kedem to realize the $50m, 50,000sq m Acro C6 Tower. Climbing to 34 floors, the mixed-use tower will primarily consist of office units anchored by 3 floors of commercial activity. Conceived of as an art-architecture fusion, the Bauhaus-inspired structure will host its own art gallery, conceptual light installations, and bespoke carpeting as part of its interior design by Pitsou Kedem.

Rothschild Tower
Richard Meier & Partners
2017

A household name in the West, Richard Meier’s Bauhaus-inspired residential tower straddles the lengths of the famed Rothschild Boulevard, and bumps elbows with concurrent products of Tel Aviv’s current tech tower boom including the Sarona Tower and iconic Azrieli Centre.

ToHA Towers
Ron Arad
Scheduled for 2018

It’s rare for a 1.8 hectare site to become available in any city centre; British architect Ron Arad’s in-progress ToHA will grace its namesake, Totzeret Haaretz Street, in the heart of Tel Aviv near the bohemian paradise of Carmel Market. Nicknamed the ‘Iceberg’, its two office towers clock in at 28 floors and 63 floors, together offering 160,000 sq m of floor space. Still, the complex will remain light on its feet, supported by slim core ‘legs’ enmeshed within densely planted landscape.

Bein Arim Tower
Miloslavsky architects
2021

Whatever way you cut it – 100 stories, 400 m tall, or 150,000 m² of floor space – Bein Arim tower will be epic. Already building its reputation as Israel’s own Empire State building, the triangular-shaped structure will take root near the Savidor Central Railway Station at the eastern end of Tel Aviv. Its three sides will symbolically and financially link Tel Aviv to neighbouring Ramat Gan and Givatayim, as partnered cities in the project.

Tel Aviv School of Entrepreneurship
David S Robins (Robinsalliance) and Dan Price (Price Piltzer Yawitz Architects)
2016

Stationed like some industrial aquatic creature on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the Adelson School of Entrepreneurship melds Mediterranean Bauhaus with factory-like exposed functionality. Fins of metal mesh and concrete shield the dark glazed glass façade, which allows a generous glimpse into the building’s inner activity. A suspended steel central staircase anchors the top three floors of classrooms and offices to the open public space and exhibition hall below.

Gordon Gallery
Gottesman Szmelcman Architecture
2017

Gordon Gallery’s third outlet in Tel Aviv is nestled on the southern fringe of the city, leaning into the adjacent gallery hotspot of Shapira. A glowing slab of concrete sandwiched between carpentry workshops and a zipper factory, the airy 165 m² space is intended to host a range of contemporary artwork.

Magasin III
Goldschmid Arditi Ben Naim Architects
2018

Swedish contemporary art museum and foundation Magasin III opened its Jaffa outpost in early 2018, taking the all-hours lifestyle of the city as its point of inspiration for a 24/7 programme. Tapping Israeli architects Goldschmid Arditi Ben Naim for the sophisticated renovation of the 100-year old building, Magasin III’s light-washed interiors never sleep, but mark a new dawn for Tel Aviv’s art scene.

Photography: Youval Hai

Arsuf Residences
Gottesman-Szmelcman Architecture
2017

Still, the techies gotta sleep too sometimes, and Western media outlets’ dominant typecast of Tel Aviv’s architecture scene as sleek modernist residential projects isn’t without reason. This razor-sharp residential complex by Israeli-Franco Gottesman-Szmelcman Architecture was built for the gated coastal community of Arsuf, Israel, just north of Tel Aviv. It offers stunning sea views and borders the scenic Apollonia National Park. Each of its ten apartments has its own unique layout and size, cultivating the sense of a mini-village.

Working with the existing urban fabric is many architects’ bread and butter, with extensions and refurbishments making up a large chunk of the more city-dwelling practices’ residential projects; yet this doesn’t mean the designs are any less inspirational than their more rural – and often larger – counterparts. Israeli Kedem Shinar’s latest interior design is a case in point.

Created within an original 1960s, 110 sq m apartment in the heart of Tel Aviv, the project consisted of the complete transformation of the interiors into a space that is ‘contemporary and young’.

The architect’s solution revolved around opening up the public spaces, uniting living, kitchen and dinning areas into a bright, coherent whole. ‘The original apartment layout contained a very long and dark living room, across a length of only half of the building façade’, recalls the architect. ‘This prevented the penetration of light to the deeper parts of the house. The biggest challenge for me here was to increase the sense of light and spaciousness of the public area.’ Offsetting this, the more private spaces are tucked away at the back of the house, and include the master suite and two children’s bedrooms.  

Inspired by two-dimensional design, the architect incorporated plenty of graphic details and references, such as a custom-made lamp in the living room, which ‘climbs up the wall in straight angles, white tile cladding with colourful grout in two bathrooms, thus creating grid-like compositions’, she explains.

‘I was influenced by a blend between de stijl graphic design with linear straight angles and areas of colour, but with a muted, softer palette of colours,’ she continues. ‘The local Tel Aviv Bauhaus architecture is a further source of inspiration – including clean linear lines, white washed walls as well as black profile windows.’

The chosen materials play a key role in the apartment’s overall feel. Shinar opted for light grey hardwood floor that mimics the tone of concrete, but adds warmth. Custom-made carpentry and exposing the original ironmongery highlight the building’s historical character and 1960s design, creating a clear thread that brings together past, present and future.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Kedem Shinar Design website

In Tel Aviv’s White City, a blanket of Bauhaus buildings unrolls across the neighbourhood like a pure, geometric, architectural picnic. And now, Richard Meier & Partners has added a sleek new addition to the UNESCO World Heritage Site – the practice’s first international residential tower and first project in Israel.

From the 1930s, the area was populated with white modernist blocks, designed by German Jewish architects who had escaped Germany during the Nazi occupation and settled in Israel. Meier’s new building was designed with this specific urban context in mind: ‘The design of the buildings in the White City made a deep impression on me when I visited Israel many years ago,’ Meier explains. ‘So to work in this context has been an aspiration of mine for a long time.’ 

Following Bauhaus design principles, the concrete building has a modular rectilinear emphasis, with a glazed façade layered with an aluminium gridded louvered screen. Described as a ‘veil’, the screen provides a graceful layer of protection to the apartments, a concept that was inspired by traditional Middle Eastern clothing.

Sitting at the prominent intersection of Rothschild Boulevard and Allenby Street, the 154m high tower – with 42 levels above ground – brings a new sense of scale to the low- to mid-rise district, but the colour and lightness of the louvered façade allow a cordial conversation with the neighbouring buildings. At street level, retail spaces are left open and transparent to reduce the upper mass of the tower, which rests on slim piloti.

With service space at the core of the building, large window frames at the outer perimeter of the volume prioritise light and views into the open-plan apartments where the sliding louver blinds can be adjusted, forming a privacy buffer to the city.

‘It is my hope that inviting the timeless quality of this city’s light and views into an open layout for the residences, a design we haven’t seen much here, will bring together the existing elements with a fresh perspective,’ says Meier.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Richard Meier & Partners website

Adjacent to Tel Aviv’s bustling Carmel Market, in a 1930s Bauhaus building, restored by architect Nitza Szmuk, the 40-room Poli House is the newest property from family-owned hospitality outfit, the Dayan Group and the Brown Hotels collection.

Inside, Canadian-American designer Karim Rashid has taken his cues from the tech-savvy, forward-thinking city, with neon colours, mesmerising graphics and ultramodern shapes. Elevators flourished with custom mood lighting and LED screens that display the local weather conditions, whisk new arrivals up to the rooftop for check in, where an infinity pool and sweeping city views make for an impressive first impression.

Downstairs, immerse yourself in a novel from the onsite bookstore while sipping on organic coffee in the Breakfast Café’s secret garden, or simply stroll over to the  market next door for a high-voltage dose of Tel Avivian food and culture.

ADDRESS

1 Nachalat Binyamin St

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

The history of the Bauhaus in Tel Aviv begins before Israel existed. A number of German Jewish architects, fleeing the tyranny of Hitler – who had shut down the then Berlin-based Bauhaus by 1933 – arrived in Mandatory Palestine in the early 1930s, and set about constructing buildings in an atmosphere of social and political idealism that perfectly suited the Bauhausian aspiration of improving quality of life through design and architecture.

Between 1930 and 1948, together with architects from the region, they developed a distinctive style, influenced by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus in Europe, but adapted to the fierce Middle Eastern sun and the exigencies of the terrain and culture.

The result was the emergence of a distinctive local modernism – easily recognisable in its use of white plaster, recessed windows, flat roofs and long narrow balconies, introduced for the climate. This can be seen in 4,000 buildings today in Tel Aviv – the largest number in the Bauhaus or International Style of any city, anywhere in the world. In 2003, the White City – as this collection of structures is known – was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and more than half of its buildings are now under protection.

'Today, efforts are being made to restore many previously neglected buildings, and one can see already quite a lot of wonderfully restored buildings throughout the White City,' says Micha Gross, of the Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv. The centre, dedicated to archiving and documenting the White City, arranges guided tours every Friday.

Meanwhile, to celebrate the remarkable history of the Bauhaus in the city, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is presenting a new exhibition (a 1984 show on Bauhaus at the museum popularised the term 'White City') featuring a wealth of material, documentation and photographs. The survey also includes works by Bauhaus masters Oskar Schlemmer and Walter Gropius, connecting their concerns to those of contemporary designers such as Konstantin Grcic, Van Bo Le-Mentzel, Studio Minale-Maeda, Front Design, Unfold and Opendesk. Proof that, heritage status notwithstanding, the Bauhaus in Tel Aviv is still very much alive.

INFORMATION

’The Bauhaus #itsallaboutdesign’ is on view until 7 January 2017. For more information, visit the Tel Aviv Museum of Art website

ADDRESS

Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Sderot Sha'ul HaMelech 27
Tel Aviv-Yafo, 61332012

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Israeli architecture firm Pitsou Kedem has taken their love of geometry to new heights in a private Tel Aviv penthouse featuring an innovative, multipurpose 'origami' wall.

The sculpted, three-dimensional wall, made of folded iron, runs the length of the apartment, isolating the sitting area and kitchen. 'The idea was to create a wall to serve as a design element that incorporates all the different spaces of the apartment to one language,' says director Pitsou Kedem, who led the project with architect Nurit Ben Yosef.
 
The polished angular wall dominates the space, but also serves as something Kedem calls a 'smart' wall – appearing as a lengthy relief sculpture while simultaneously hiding the apartment's services. Compartments open electronically to reveal the television, and hidden within the wall's various shapes are storage cupboards, a wine cabinet and doors leading to the toilets and bedroom.

The rhythm of the design is carried through to the chevron parquet flooring, which Kedem says acts as a softening element, counterbalancing the abundance of iron and natural stone materials used throughout the living area and kitchen. Meanwhile, a web of hanging, exposed bulbs allows light to play off the wall's matte finish, and illuminates the kitchen's clean and minimal Boffi fixtures. The lighting was designed by Orly Avron Alkabes.

Though the bathrooms and bedroom are tucked away out of sight, the same focus on form is carried into the apartment's private areas. Material elements, such as the natural stone of the kitchen counters, are found in the bathroom's walls, and even the tub and bedside tables are studies in sharp, elegant angles.

The origami ironwork also makes an appearance on the balcony just off the kitchen, where seating and a bar area take on the same angular folds. With the option to cover up the trappings of modern life, the new penthouse is a supremely unique backdrop from which residents and guests can take in the expansive views of Tel Aviv’s burgeoning skyline. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Pitsou Kedem's website

Photography: Amit Geron 

Paritzki & Liani, the Israel-based architecture firm founded by Paola Liani and Itai Paritzki, has unveiled the first-ever Kure Boutique beauty salon (and store) located on the popular Frishman Street in the heart of Tel Aviv. The beauty clinic specialises in pedicures, manicures, facial treatments and hair removal, as well as treatments aimed at men.

Located on the ground floor of a residential building, the design duo was tasked to create a 'bright and multi-purpose salon'. To create an atmosphere of natural light in the space, they designed two stretched backlit plastic membranes and positioned them along different distances on the main walls in order to enhance the depth of the room.

A thick black carpet covers the stairs and the walls of the second floor. The basic idea of this part of the clinic was to recreate an overall sense of softness and hushed atmosphere over the floor. The glass wall of the treatment rooms further extends this level, by the vis-à-vis mirrors and the large number of fluorescent neon lights on the ceiling.

'In this project we explore the walls as emitters of different hues of experience. The contrast is between the permanent white back-light, the fluorescent walls in the entrance area and the primordial darkness of black where black plays the role of void of light, as in the plate of Robert Fludd,' the duo said. (Fludd was a 17th century physician and occultist, who included a black page in a 1617 publication.) 'The lack of light keeps a roughness that drags you inside. In our work, many details evoke the immaterial phenomena of illusion in space.'

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Kure Boutique website

Photography: Amit Geron

Tel Aviv continues its boutique hotel building boom with the addition of White Villa, an intimate property without pretence but lots of character. 

Inspired by Le Corbusier, original architect Samuel Barkai designed the house as a private residence in 1947. Like most properties built in the international style of the time, the two-floor villa stood on poles above street level. Today the property features 18 simple but elegant rooms, a rooftop patio, a spiral staircase that runs through its core, and a verdant front porch where breakfast and drinks are served. Rooms on the ground floor open to private terraces while a handful of other rooms feature balconies. Though on the small side, the feeling throughout is light and airy thanks to white-on-white decor and elegant furnishings. Bespoke toiletries are by local perfumer Erez Zelinsky Rozen. 

Architect Stephano Dorata took five years to complete the project due to Israel’s strict preservation codes. During that time Dorata worked meticulously to maintain the spirit of the house by adding fireplaces and elegant banisters. Common areas are limited to a lounge decorated with comfortable sofas and a bookshelf lined with Taschen and Phaidon tomes, while the breakfast room features a handful of tables. A lush front porch offers additional seating for a morning coffee or afternoon cocktail. 

Ideally located on Ben Tsiyon Boulevard, the property is an easy stroll to Dizengoff Centre, Rothschild Boulevard and the beach. Guests can borrow a white beach cruiser bikes to explore the city. 

ADDRESS

Ben Tsiyon Blvd 25

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Early one recent Monday morning, while much of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art was just waking up, one expansive room had already come to life. The walls, filled with the work of Israeli artist David Tartakover, were inspiring conversations that ranged from political to personal – just as the artist intended.

Tartakover is perhaps the most famous artist in Israel, something he accomplished by tackling the country’s political history head-on in his minimalist poster design. Born in 1944, before Israel established statehood in 1948, Tartakover has borne witness to his country’s cultural and political evolution and been an active participant – he won the coveted Israel Prize in 2002.

Simply titled 'David Tartakover: The Exhibition', the Tel Aviv retrospective draws from nearly every area of Tartakover’s design work. The artist and curator Irith Hadar did not work chronologically, and six open-plan sections allow Tartakover’s straightforward image and text combinations to reveal the weight of Israel’s history.

Collages of newspaper clippings and photographs illustrating the 1967 war sit alongside Tartakover’s well-known ‘anniversary’ posters, which chronicle the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the years that have followed. Photographs from the series I’m here – which insert and identify the ‘artist’ himself in news imagery – are found around the corner from a wall dubbed 'Tartakover and Friends', a salon-style hang of cultural imagery that inspires him.

'Tartakover leaves things open for thinking and for rethinking,' Hadar says. 'It’s not that he says "this is the way". He takes phrases we know, images we know and he combines them in a way that you have to think about them.'

The exhibition runs until 24 October, and is sure to keep visitors thinking and rethinking long after they leave the museum.

INFORMATION

’David Tartakover: The Exhibition’ is on view until 24 October. For more information, visit the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s website

Photography courtesy the artist and Tel Aviv Museum of Art

ADDRESS

Tel Aviv Museum of Art
27 Shaul Hamelech Boulevard
61332012, Tel Aviv

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

At a major new exhibition at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the impact of European modernism on the architecture of British Mandate Palestine reveals the remarkably coherent connections between the new social order and the construction that was happening in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem in the early 20th century.

Focussing on the period between 1930 and 1940, 'Social Construction: Modern Architecture in British Mandate Palestine' spotlights some of Israel’s most iconic buildings, representative of a distinctive regional interpretation of international modernism that emerged. The exhibition draws on architects Ada Karmi-Melamede and Dan Price’s book Architecture in Palestine during the British Mandate, 1917–1948, incorporating 40 beautiful interpretative drawings and 60 archival photographs collected as part of their unprecedented research over 25 years. 'They produced a remarkable body of knowledge that is [as] intelligent as it is beautiful,' says exhibition curator, Oren Sagiv.

With limited resources and technology, and with only local materials available, 'the Zionist modern architects in Palestine were free to experiment and search for their own version of the modern language, which was neither inspired by European technological innovations of the time, nor enamoured with the picturesque local architecture and handicraft', Sagiv explains.

Characterised by functional, geometric forms, as well as other prevalent features such as balconies, stairwells, double walls, pergolas and communal rooftop spaces, the buildings merge public and private spaces, optimising liminal spaces – in direct symbiosis with the social ideology, at a time of transition and turmoil, but also of great hope for a new nation. Sagiv’s approach is not nostalgic, however, but an attempt to redefine the way the public look at the buildings from this period, many of which are starting to vanish, with the proliferation of new construction projects in Israel’s cities.

The exhibition also illuminates the way in which cities developed. While European apartment blocks of the time were typically in contact, most of those in British Mandate Palestine were freestanding – a result of 'garden city' inspired town planning. 'Yet they still came together as homogeneous urban façades,' Sagiv continues. Typically three or four stories high, the cumulative designs produced a sense of 'horizontal continuity'. 'This contributes to an important aspect of the local modernist language: the urban modern space. [...] Unlike many places in the world, the modernist typology in Palestine actually developed into an architecture of streets and public spaces, creating an urban fabric that went beyond the singularity of individual buildings.'

INFORMATION
’Social Construction: Modern Architecture in British Mandate Palestine’ is on view until 31 December. For more information, visit the the Israel Museum’s website

ADDRESS

Palevsky Design Pavilion
Israel Museum
Derech Ruppin
Jerusalem

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

The most exciting dining destination in the Middle East (and, arguably, in the Mediterranean) is Tel Aviv, where young chefs explore a wide spectrum of culinary traditions and add a unique slant. Nowhere is this more evident than at OCD, helmed by a rising star in Israel’s culinary world.

The restaurant’s name comes from the young chef, Raz Rahav, and his obsession with complex, precise cooking, and elaborate plating. OCD offers two sittings per night and reservations are required in advance. There is no menu from which to choose. Instead, guests inform the restaurant of any dietary restrictions at the time of booking, and Rahav creates a nine-course culinary adventure, which changes monthly, using local ingredients sourced from farms and handpicked vendors. 

Local architecture firm, AKD Studio, took on the challenge to transform a former steel engraving plant in Noga Complex, a rising design area on the edge of Jaffa, into a inviting space of raw concrete, glass, wood, white walls, and brick. The choice of materials and the ceiling’s exposed oak beams lend the space a barnlike vibe—albeit a very restrained and modern barn. 

At the centre of the room is an open-concept kitchen flanked by an Ivanka concrete bar and 18 Penthaus chairs upholstered in chartreuse hued velvet. Bespoke light pendants that hang over the bar keep the mood subdued and warm. A solitary piece of art, which changes often, hangs on an exposed brick wall. 

Throughout the meal, diners are invited to get out of their seats and walk right into the action – just like they might at a friend’s dinner party – to ask questions, take a closer look at how the chef plates each dish, and even take pictures. 

ADDRESS

17 Tirtsa St

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

In a Tel Aviv neighbourhood filled with high-rises, a new residential property from Israeli architectural firm Pitsou Kedem lies low, but a striking, gleaming white exterior makes sure it’s anything but low profile.

Located in the Old North neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, the property was inspired by the 'English Garden' motif that dominated the area’s mid-century, often contiguous, homes as a way of maximising space in otherwise close quarters. But it also pays homage to a signature Tel Aviv style with its unique latticework facade, mixing concepts to create an intimate home with modern proportions.

Pitsou Kedem says that the two long bands of ironwork windows 'are in conversation, as it were, with the early International Style homes built in Tel Aviv, some of which displayed similar latticework that emulated freedom of form – rendered by indecipherable spatial division.' Key to the design’s functionality is the allowance for plenty of natural, patterned light, while still maintaining privacy.

The exterior of the structure can trick the eye – from the side, the low-pitched roof recalls the 'village home' style that was historically found in the area, but from the front this nearly disappears, maintaining the clean lines of a flat, modern roof.

Inside the home’s 300 sq m, the ground floor living area anchors the open-plan design. The rear of the house is encased in large glazed windows and sliding glass doors, and when opened, it’s as though the landscaped back garden (complete with pool) is a seamless part of the living area as well.

A floating staircase zigzags up one side of the ground floor, leading to the upper-level balcony and the bedrooms. Using glass alongside the stairs, as well as along the balcony that floats over the central living area, the transparency throughout truly adds to the feeling of indoor-outdoor living.

The project was led by Pitsou Kedem’s Noa Groman and features lighting design by Orly Avron Alkabes and interiors by Eti Buskila.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Pitsou Kedem’s website

Photography: Amit Geron

Sushi and a bonsai plant. These are the metaphorical comparisons Nendo's founder Oki Sato makes of his studio's style of design. Design that can produce 100 pieces a year, and simultaneously work on 400 at the same time. Design that astonishes the rest of the industry, with its ability to maintain an impeccable level of purity and hurl out product after product. 'I place a lot of importance on the freshness of the ideas.' He reveals, in his comparison to sushi, 'I try to work quickly, shaping the fish before the heat of my own body is transferred over to it.'

It comes as no surprise that someone was soon going to suggest the idea of a retrospective for the Japanese inventor, but for such a young brand that formed just over ten years ago, it is still quite a feat. The show follows on from the year survey of the studio's work at Salone del Mobile in 2015, and the mesmerising triumph of this year’s the 'Light and Shadow' marble exhibition with Marsotto Edizioni in Milan. It is quite fitting that what comes next is a question of what is between these opposites, in-between the conveyer belt of products, in-between the personal and professional life of Oki Sato and Nendo design.

Housed in the Ron Arad-designed Design Museum Holon in Tel Aviv that just celebrated its fifth anniversary, ‘The Space in Between’ is pulled together by curator Maria Cristina Didero as an almost scientific investigation of the designer’s processes, imagination, shapes and materials, and how they all intrinsically connect. The exhibition opens with a new site-specific piece that brings together the wares of Glas Italia and Caesarstone, titled 'In the shade'. Located within the rusted steel ribs of the Holon's atrium, the contrasting sheets of material cajole with shade and lighting. This tactically introduces us to a running theme with the show's subtleties. ‘Japanese designers really try to look into light and shadow, rather than colours,’ Sato explains.

Following this is the mighty plethora of designs across two floors of the impressive edifice, kindly categorised by Didero into six divisions of 'Between': 'Textures', 'Objects', 'Relationships', 'Boundaries', 'Senses' and 'Processes.'

The research starts on the lower ground floor with an array of 12 unique Nendo chairs, each piece from a different category. Every seat shows his abstract, slightly fairy-tale like versions of an everyday product, from the ‘Fadeout’ chair that blends wood and glass to the ‘Diamond’ chair that looks more like an atomic structure than a chair.

The upper floor is host to the rest of the 74 designs, each arranged in bright white boxes, allowing the different forms to stand out. Here the show travels from the ‘Processes’ section, which highlights the studio's delicate side in the intricacy of the patchwork glass for Lasvit all the way to the ‘Objects’ section that contains the compact emergency aid kit for natural disasters 'MINIM+AID'.

This epic leap from one panache to another continues, whether its is a USB stick paper clip for Elecom that they created with Italian designer Luca Nichetto, or geometric chocolates for Maison&Objet Paris, their elegance is maintained. 'It is possible to find a balance between industry and poetry,' Sato explains, 'I call it the balance between the right brain and the left brain.'

Witnessing such masterpieces bound together, we are also invited into Sato's personal self, which is imbued in every piece. 'Design is part of my everyday life, like breathing or sleeping,' he tells Didero, 'I think that the day I begin to consider design as work will be my final day as a designer.’ We certainly hope that day never comes.

INFORMATION

'Nendo: The Space in Between' is on view until 29 October at Design Museum Holon, for more information, visit the museums's website.

Photography: Takumi Ota

ADDRESS

Pinhas Eilon St. 8 Holon
5845400
Israel

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Avraham Yasky was his generation’s most prolific architect. Early in his career he worked in the office of pioneering Israeli architect Arieh Sharon; later, he planned Rabin Square with Shimon Povsner, aged just 25. He went on to found the school of architecture at the Tel Aviv University and, in 1965, established Israel’s largest architectural firm with partners Joseph Sivan and Yitzhak Moore. MYS (Moore Yasky Sivan Architects) are responsible for many of Tel Aviv’s defining skyscrapers, including the envelope of the Azrieli Centre and the iconic beachfront Opera Tower, as well as numerous commercial buildings in the city centre, such as the Platinum, Alrov and AFI Towers.

Yasky made his name with his 1960s ’quarter-kilometre apartments’, working primarily with concrete – they were functional, monochromatic, modernist buildings. Later, his style would shift away from brutalism towards the possibilities of glass – a feature of many of the commercial projects he built – as well as more ornamental elements, seen in the shopping malls and pink-tiled towers that typify his later work.

Known for the flexibility and indifference with which he often faced stylistic and ethical issues, Yasky – who passed away in 2014, aged 87 – argued his success was simply down to good intuition and common sense. Now, the ideas behind his successes are to be explored through plans, photographs and other documentary materials relating to hundreds of Yasky projects, at a dynamic exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Commemorating and celebrating Yasky and his far-reaching legacy, the retrospective also contemplates the often troubled relationship between architecture and society – a relationship that is particularly complicated in a place that has seen such dramatic economic, social and political shifts as Israel in the course of the five decades of Yasky’s career.

If architecture is a mirror to society – as curator Dan Handel suggests—the exhibition poses another significant question to its audience: ’Is the story of the recent decades to be told as a sequence of intellectual, technological and material achievements – or perhaps as a tale about the gradual loss of an elusive, unquantifiable quality identified with Israel’s most influential architect?’ Time, as always, will tell.

INFORMATION

’Yasky and Co: Israeli Architecture According to Avraham Yasky’ is on view from 16 April – 27 August. For more information, visit the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s website

ADDRESS

Tel Aviv Museum of Art
27 Shaul Hamelech Blvd
Tel Aviv

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

The London-and-Berlin-based duo Elmgreen & Dragset will be opening their first show ever in Israel on 31 March, at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The exhibition comprises the third part of a trilogy – previous chapters took place at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo and the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.

This site-specific exhibition, entitled 'Powerless Structures', questions political, financial, cultural and even physical social frameworks. In the opinion of Ruti Direktor – head curator for contemporary art at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art – these questions are viewed through an utterly unique lens.

'In Elmgreen & Dragset's work, the biographical element is at once explicit and implicit, and it is almost always tied, in various ways, to their relationship and their dual identity as artists,' says Direktor in the passage she wrote about the artists in the book Elmgreen & Dragset – Biography, accompanying the Oslo show.

'Thus, for instance, in their short play, Happy Days in the Art World, the protagonists are two artists working together, concerned about what will happen to their creative future if they break up.' But even just the idea of biography is something the artists turn upside down by signing their works with their two names.

The works on display at the exhibition span the years 2006 to 2016 and include pieces like For as Long as it Lasts, 2016, a full size replica of a section of the Berlin Wall mounted in dialogue with another work, The Future, 2014, an installation of a hooded teen sitting on a fire escape. Of course, typical of the duo are cheekier works like Donation Box, 2006, a transparent box filled with personal items that, instead of being open for donations, it is sealed off. Of course, it's just another knowing wink from the artists.

INFORMATION

’Powerless Structures’ runs from 31 March – 27 August. For more information, visit the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s website

ADDRESS

Tel Aviv Museum of Art
27 Shaul Hamelech Blvd
POB 33288, Tel Aviv

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Last week saw the launch of the very first Israel Design Week, a five-day-long series of events attended by local architects, designers and design enthusiasts in Tel Aviv and spearheaded by the Israeli Building Center, an organisation with ample experience in producing similar shows over the past decade. 

By focusing on various aspects of local design and celebrating its progress and achievement, the organisers aimed at bringing distinguished designers and architects closer to the public, making design accessible to all. 

'Israeli designers and architects are involved with more than 350 projects in 58 countries,' said Eran Rolls, founder of Israel Design Week and chairman of the Building Centre, in the opening ceremony, honoured by Tel-Aviv mayor Ron Huldai. 'They design apartment buildings, malls, hotels, restaurants and offices in prime locations. Israel Design Week honours the local design scene.'

'Due to the political climate Israel is a high-tech and military technology nation. Nevertheless, it made a tremendous progress in intellectual property. We have no design tradition to lean on, but rather have complete freedom and intellectual flexibility that give us an advantage,' says Pitsou Kedem, a prominent Israeli architect and a participant in the Israel Design Week. 'This event reflects the improvement of Israeli design and narrows the distance between us, architects and designers, and the public.'

Kedem and the work of 30 more major architects and designers formed the core element of Israel Design Week. Their public lectures – taking place at various Tel Aviv bars – were considered by many the highlight of the design week and drew lots of attention. 

Other events were spread across various venues, in a concept similar to Salone del Mobile's Trunk Show in Milan – artists presented work in fashion and design stores, there was an architecture conference, a design show comprising 180 design and construction companies of various scales, cocktails, parties and a show fusing fashion and design. 

All were offered free of charge, attracting some 30,000 people – an impressive 30 per cent more than what the organisers initially expected. 'We intend to turn Israel Design Week into tradition,' summarise Rolls. 'Next year it will take place in Jerusalem and other major cities and will practically include the whole country.'

London-based master of minimalism John Pawson has designed the penthouse for W Hotel's Tel Aviv outpost, drawing on Jaffa's rich historical heritage in the process; and if you were tempted to move to the city's sunny shores, then you'll be pleased to hear that the property has just been released for sale. The catch? This is 'the most expensive penthouse currently on sale in Israel', says developer RFR Holding, proudly.

Offering stunning views of the city's ancient port and the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the spacious, 1,503 sq m penthouse is just one of the residences on site designed by Pawson and his team.

Located within the walls of the 19th century complex that once housed Jaffa's French Hospital, this project is in excellent company; set, as it is, within a historically protected and upmarket neighbourhood of Tel Aviv that combines art and lifestyle offerings of appeal to tourists and locals alike.

The complex may be getting the contemporary treatment inside, but the project also carefully preserves its more historical elements, making sure the new design bridges old and new. Working with these, as well as the area's ample natural light, Pawson made use of a variety of materials, including a specially designed perforated screen for the property's large openings, created to cleverly filter sunlight and views.

The penthouse is slated for completion later in 2016; the buyer will work with Pawson's office to add the finishing, bespoke touches to their new home.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit John Pawson's website

Tel Aviv’s Hotel Montefiore – the city’s prized boutique hotel, housed in an iconic 1922 eclectic style building – has, as part of a one off collaboration with Institut Francais of Israel, invited acclaimed chef Michel Sarran to host a three-day culinary experience called 'So French, So Good'. Running from February 8–10, the fare will refelect the restaurant’s commitment to seasonal, local ingredients – plus some extra curated elements that need to be specially imported, and utilised with an Israeli sensibility.

Known for his two Michelin star restaurant in Toulouse – as well as hosting France’s edition of MasterChef – Sarran has partnered with Moran Yanai, the chef of the hotel’s Vietnamese-French restaurant, to create a menu of transposed French cuisine. 'The idea of sharing ideas and customs, blending them to create the most unique culinary offering, is a time honoured tradition among chefs around the world,' says Yanai. 

The duo will concoct one-off dishes and a prix fix menu with wine pairings, featuring spin-offs of signature Hotel Montefiore dishes, including duck with classic plum sauce and ginger; pork chop with bacon and manchego; and much more asides.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit Hotel Montefiore’s website

ADDRESS

Hotel Montefiore
36 Montefiore Street
Tel Aviv 66 88 3

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Tel Avivian by birth, and breeding, Lior Modan lives and works in New York City. With a new solo show, 'Wild Rice', he's coming home for his first comprehensive showing in Israel, at Tel Aviv's ex-tahini factory-turned-gallery Contemporary by Golconda.

'As a contemporary artist who is also an immigrant, I am always hovering over a place of non-belonging like an astronaut', said Modan. In this latest show, the works, enigmatic and surprising, find their own worthy sense of place as large-scale deliveries. Often hard to define, the work, according to Modan, is a 'Compost Concert' – presenting various attempts to form a bridge between the image and the painted surface. 'I feel that the works share a physical instability that keep them morphing as you spend more time with them,' he explains.

In Sweat the W, a frozen, ginger mattress leaves its mark inside a rosy, summery painting. Lugete Veneres poses a quote from Ezra Pound’s Hellenistic poetry on canvas with a sample of families of penguins, Marc Jacobs design, torches and even pipes. As for Blue Velvet, dancers revolve over the artist’s face with a surprising mountain view. 'I appreciate,' Modan explains, 'that odd characteristic of artworks constantly changing in their search for a new audience.'

INFORMATION

’Wild Rice’ is on view from 24 December. For more information, visit Contemporary by Golconda’s website

ADDRESS

Contemporary by Golconda
Herzl Sreet 117
Tel Aviv-Yafo, 66555

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Leon Avigad and Nitzan Perry of Tel Aviv-based hospitality group Leopard, have launched a sister property to the city’s much-loved cultural landmark, the Brown TLV Hotel. This time located along the re-developed coastline, among some of Tel Aviv’s most anticipated architectural projects, the Brown Beach House is a welcome boutique offering, challenging the area’s somewhat staid hotel chains. Dressed by local outfit, vstudio and designer Aline Langlieb, the interiors are a distinct blend of retro resort and hip urbanism, with swathes of plush Carrera marble and slick brass details in the 40 guestrooms and cane and vintage furniture in the public spaces downstairs. After a day spent in the on-site spa or soaking up the sun on your room’s private terrace, head down to the restaurant for some fresh fish from the Med and homegrown wine or while the night away in the Flamingo Bar- already a neighbourhood hotspot for live music, pop-up events and visual art parties. 

ADDRESS

64 Hayarkon Street

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Encompassing two restored historic buildings in the heart of Tel Aviv, The Norman is a lesson in restrained 1920s elegance. With one building dedicated entirely to suites, the hotel’s accommodation offerings are expansive, totalling 50 individually designed rooms, with the Penthouse Duplex shining as the pièce de résistance. With one floor that elegantly showcases the best of the building’s original 20th century architecture, and another — built to purpose, — featuring a terrace and hot tub, the suite aptly sums up the sumptuousness of the hotel, which also includes a rooftop pool, spa and its own secluded citrus garden. Drinking and dining options span the grand Norman Restaurant, a brasserie-inspired venue serving Niçoise cuisine amongst plush upholstered banquettes, to the relaxed 1940s colonial-styled Library, where potent cocktails are served to the city’s who’s who.

ADDRESS

23-25 Nachmani Street
Tel Aviv 6579441
Israel

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

A former Jaffa orange hangar in Tel Aviv has a new tenant: the latest outpost from Tel Aviv's organic coffee brand Loveat. Designed by Studio Ronen Levin, the café takes up just a corner of the industrial space, enclosed by three glass façades overlooking the charismatic old port. Building on the shipyard theme is the kitchen, camouflaged behind a wall of crates. Custom furnishings were inspired by warehouse equipment and bar stools are repurposed tractor seats from the 1930s. Loveat is celebrated for its ethical stance, using only organic, fair trade coffee and seasonal ingredients in the fresh sandwiches and salads.

ADDRESS

Hangar 1
Jaffa Port
Hanamal street
Jaffa
Tel Aviv

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

The chef who put contemporary Israeli cuisine on the map has opened a new Tel Aviv restaurant. Star chef Haim Cohen’s fresh, inventive way with Jewish, Kurdish, Turkish and even French flavors means a menu of simple yet original dishes like dalal calamari with seared fennel and caramelized tabun, chopped salad with sardines and Parmesan, and veal sweetbreads with yellow polenta sauce. Israeli architects Baranowitz Kronenberg designed the raw space in concrete, the walls decorated with patchwork Turkish carpets telling the story of old Jaffa. Tall wood shutters reduces the intense Middle Eastern light that seeps through floor-to-ceiling windows and hits the scrapwood chairs and tables by Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek. There’s the odd vintage find as well, like rustic grey lamps from the Czech Republic.

ADDRESS

98 Yigal Alon Street
Tel Aviv
Israel

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Wander around Ron Gilad's new exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and you'll get an unnerving feeling you are being watched. Sometimes the suggestion is subtle - implied by a light behind a closed door in the gallery's display wall - and at other times it's more direct, as with 'Peepholes', a work that spies on you as you peruse the show. Another exhibit ('The Man in the Wall') features a dagger protruding through the plaster with a blood-red thread trailing from its blade. There's definitely life inside these walls - and it can often be quite threatening.

'The exhibition started by dealing with walls as boundaries, which can bring a sense of security but can also be a little frightening,' says the Tel Aviv-based artist-cum-designer. 'There are so many different emotions and points of departure for each and every piece.'

Trickery and wit have long been part of Gilad's oeuvre, whether he is creating limited edition art pieces for the likes of Dilmos Gallery, or art-infused industrial design works for brands such as Molteni & C - scooping the 2013 Wallpaper* Designer of the Year award along the way. 'He sustains his vision of design as a form of amusement, a provocation, a humoristic and at times enigmatic act,' says Meira Yagid-Haimovici, curator of design and architecture at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

In the Museum's Herta and Paul Amir Building, this playfulness is at its height, as the show's title 'The logical, the ironic and the absurd' attests. To create some of the approximately 100 pieces in the show - most of which were produced in 2013 - Gilad has stripped objects of their intended functions, abstracted and used them to new ends, such as series of Thonet chairs that have been miniaturised and turned into legs for a sofa, or a pair of wooden doors that have been bent together to form a gate.

Meanwhile, standing proud at the end of the exhibition is 'Butler No.4', an extension to his most surreal series to date. From the front, the sculpture (originally commissioned for our Handmade exhibition in Milan earlier this year) looks like a headless valet holding up a panel of wool as a room divider, while seen from behind, it's nothing more than an abstract stick figure. In this exhibition the Butler screens nothing, so his function becomes even further removed.

Witty as Gilad's works may be, they never feel gimmicky. Instead, they have an unusual beauty; even a poignancy at times. Many of the works dwell on the notion of 'home', a recurring theme for Gilad, expressed as far back as 2010 with his project '20 houses for 20 Friends'. At the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, there's 'Flat Façade', which looks like a normal house from the front but is completely flat when seen from the side. Then there's 'Smoking House', whose outline is fashioned from a pencil, with a hole in the roof emitting clouds of lead smoke.

Why this constant interest in the home? 'I think I have always felt foreign, and that sensation has been extreme in chaotic New York,' says the artist, who has only just returned to Israel after 11 years in the US. 'So these are like symbols of where I want to be.' 'Smoking' house suggests the warmth and heat within, while 'Flat Façade' is a sanctuary that can't quite be entered.

Part of the beauty of Gilad's work also lies in its simplicity. Even some of the largest pieces are merely suggested with outlines. 'I'm interested in the skeletons, which for me are the essay of the piece,' he explains. 'I never try to cover things with flesh and skin.' He also has the remarkable ability to make hefty materials seem lightweight and malleable: clouds are expressed in marble and a tent made from lead looks like it could float off in a gust of wind. It's this visual brevity and lightness of touch that gives his works their punch. In his hands, the smallest of sculptural details can be powerfully suggestive, which makes the life inside the gallery's walls all the more frightening.

This year is set to be a good one for Tel Aviv. Not only has it seen the renovation and construction of three major cultural institutions in the city (The Tel Aviv Cinematheque, Habima National Theatre and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art extension by American practice Preston Scott Cohen), but things were made official when Mayor Ron Huldai named 2012 Tel Aviv’s ‘Art Year’.

Next on the city’s agenda is the popular Open House event, Houses from Within, for which some of architecture's finest doors will be thrown open this weekend. 'This year we will have some 150 different events, with about 30 private homes, 40 public buildings, 50 walking tours and around 30 activities, such as bike tours, office held exhibitions etc,' says curator and architect Alon Bin Nun.

With over 100 homes open to the public free-of-charge, the event is set to show off Tel Aviv’s unique architectural mix, including old, new and renovated work by local and international architects. It also features special treats, unique to this year’s event. 'We have a tour led by world-renowned Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan in the Cultural Plaza - which he designed between the main concert hall - the national theater and a museum, as an homage to the orchards and sand dunes of early Tel Aviv,' says Bin Nun. 'Also, the French ambassador's house in Jaffa is open this year for the first time. It is a beautiful International Style building in the heart of Jaffa’s Arab section, an area otherwise made up of rural vernacular Arab houses. The story behind the house is quite extraordinary. It was designed by Jewish architect Izack Rapeport for a wealthy Arab in the 1930s. The house was later sold to the French government.'

Part of the worldwide Open House family that includes similar events in London, New York, Barcelona, Dublin and Rome, House from Within is now on its sixth year and is set to attract over 80,000 visitors during the weekend-long event. Spanning new build houses, chic urban lofts and conversions, synagogues, public buildings and urban spaces, this event has something for everybody.

To celebrate the completion of three major cultural projects, which include a new building at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art - an impressive concrete and glass structure, designed by Preston Scott Cohen, which opened last November - a new wing at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and the newly renovated Habima National Theatre, the city of Tel Aviv has declared 2012 'art year'.  To kick-start proceedings, it laid on an opening weekend with a packed schedule of cultural activities.

The weekend launched with a 24hr art marathon at the museum. The free-of-charge program of exhibitions, workshops, artist talks and live performances, drew a huge crowd. Highlights included an Anselm Kiefer guided tour through his Breaking of the Vessels show and a vocal performance by The Lightfall, an African Hebrew choir from Jerusalem, who were placed on various floors of the new building to sing at midnight.

The outside public space around the museum and performing arts centre was also packed with a series of multi-disciplinary installations, such as Dreamfields Urban Innovators an interactive 3-D game, which harnessed the collective intelligence of players to place coloured cubes within an arena. An instant photo booth, by Ido Shemi, allowed people to turn themselves into comic-like screen savers.
 
As well as these big-scale events, the city was peppered with pop-up exhibitions, guerrilla galleries and open studios, which together offered a glimpse into the buzzing creative spirit of Tel Aviv. One such pop-up was FAD (which stands for fashion, art and design) - a 30 day concept store in the Florentine area that played host to the launch of the Wallpaper* City Guide to Tel Aviv, showcasing the city's new cultural cachet.

In the south of the city, the former industrial neighbourhood of Kiryat Hamelacha (the working district) is now home to around 70 artist studios and galleries. The young creative community seems to be congregating here, where space is plentiful and rents are still reasonable. More established galleries are also beginning to relocate here, which indicates where the area is clearly headed. All weekend, specially arranged art tours stopped by the studios, allowing visitors to meet the artists and see them at work.

The newly redeveloped port at Jaffa, home to large warehouses, is a great place for studios and galleries and was worth a wander. Creative collectives, such as Four n Five, work and exhibit there, while The Salon, a two-year-old permanent space, promotes the work of young Israeli artists.