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Aphoria – Architecture of Independence
The Brutalist Style in Tel Aviv-Yafo 1948-1977

The Brutalist style, also known internationally as Post War Architecture, characterized the architecture in the State of Israel in the three decades after its establishment, from the declaration of independence in 1948 until the governmental upheaval in 1977. Through a review of the layer built in these years, this study presents and analyzes the manner in which the Brutalist style was assimilated into the city's buildings.


The settlement and public housing enterprise demanded a response on a national and urban scale to the needs of the residents and the young sovereign state. The answer was given thanks to the establishment of a diverse set of organizational infrastructures for the government institutions that were located in the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and created a new urban layer in it. Different from the architecture of the International Style and the Geddes Plan, Brutalism presented a new concept in which the building is an extroverted product of the structural systems that sustain it - architecture that presents its inner truth by exposing the basic components from which the building is built directly without decoration and without covering - the exposed truth of the material, "Beton Brut " (raw, exposed concrete). Brutalism was adopted and spread in Israel by the establishment and the architects, and thus about 300 buildings with brutalist architectural representation were built throughout the territory of the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

Dr. Yermi Hoffman, Arch. Hadas Nebo-Goldbarsht

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