Exhibition opening – Life, Plant, City: 100 Years of Geddes' Plan for Tel Aviv's Garden City

Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), a biologist, botanist, landscape theorist, sociologist, urban planner, and, in essence, a multidisciplinary thinker, is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern planning. Geddes viewed the city as a living fabric where society, nature, environment, and culture are interconnected, with planning serving to achieve harmony between human needs and their surroundings.

In the early 1920s, Tel Aviv's Mayor, Meir Dizengoff, invited Geddes to create the city's first master plan. Approved in 1925, the plan established the city's identity as a modern garden city, featuring shaded streets, wide boulevards, squares, and public gardens. Unlike Geddes' other city plans around the world, this detailed visionary document was almost fully realized and profoundly shaped Tel Aviv's character and planning discourse throughout the country. A hundred years later, Geddes' vision remains highly relevant in addressing current issues of sustainability, society, and public space.

The exhibition explores Patrick Geddes' planning and social vision through the building's unique structure. Designed to reflect the character of each floor, the building itself exemplifies the garden city housing concept. It functions as both a vertical and horizontal cross-section, allowing visitors to understand Geddes' ideas through history and research, contemporary interpretations in Tel Aviv and worldwide, and reflection on the city's future.