The Appendix: Playing the City

Patrick Geddes's city plan remains a conceptual foundation for Tel Aviv's urban planning, even a hundred years later. But how does it address current challenges, such as growing density? How can principles formulated at the beginning of the 20th century be applied to the reality of climate crises and accelerated development?

Inspired by the speculative architectural proposal in the exhibition “The Appendix: A Geddessian Hyperscraper”, we will explore key aspects of Geddes's plan in today’s context. This exercise in critical thinking invites us to update, challenge, and reinterpret his ideas. Together, we will imagine a contemporary "appendix" Geddes might have written himself for our time.

We will explore the idea of the city as an interdependent system where nature serves as infrastructure, not decoration. How communal living and shared infrastructure can reshape neighborly and community ties, and how sustainable solutions can be applied within capitalist development.

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We invite you to engage in critical thinking through design – not to solve problems, but to highlight tensions, raise questions, view the city from new perspectives, and foster public discussion about its spatial logic. Geddes would be proud!

Participants:

• Arch. Agata Woźniczka, urban planner, researcher, and creator of the exhibition.

• Arch. Erez Ella, Founding Partner & Principal Architect, HQ Architects (HQA) 

• Prof. Matanya Sack, Head of the Landscape Architecture Program at the Technion, Haifa. Founder of shelter_expanse

• Itamar Weizman, founder and CEO of Radical Idea House 

Moderator: Arch. Sabrina Cegla, Senior curator & part of the Liebling Haus Founding team.

The event will be held in English

Evening program:

19:00 – Gathering and light refreshments 

19:30 – Agata Woźniczka on Geddes' Vertical Plan 

19:45 – Guest speakers:

• Erez Ella on architectural speculation as a critical tool for design in the real world 

• Prof. Matanya Sack on green infrastructure in the city

• Itamar Weizman on urban space as a civic engine for resistance, performance, and play 

20:30 – Discussion with the audience and guest speakers

In honor of the centennial of the Geddes Plan, the Project Room presents “The Appendix: A Geddessian Hyperscraper” — an exhibition featuring an installation by Polish architect Agata Woźniczka. She proposes a radical conservation approach for the White City, bringing together the vision of the city planner Sir Patrick Geddes for Tel Aviv and today's reality of the skyscrapers. The exhibition explores how the "green" and humanist values that Geddes embedded in his 1925 plan can be reevaluated and adapted to today's climatic, urban, and social challenges — alongside the accelerated city development of the 21st century.