Anna Luise Schubert, Ines Weizman (CDA)

2020, 2’

“Bauhaus Beeline” is a short story told during a drone flight along a hundred-metre vertical axis in the centre of Tel Aviv-Yafa. It is part of our exploration of the edges of a UNESCO World Heritage Site known internationally as the White City and colloquially described as having been built in Bauhaus style. Over thirty drone flights following the same choreography show that there is more to the division between the “white” and “black” city than what is shown on the map. The buildings designated for conservation are about three to four storeys high. Above this “historical” “white” city, a speculative one begins. The demarcation lines are not only those drawn in plans or on maps; instead, they are volumetric. Furthermore, modernist buildings can also be found outside of the White City, in north and east Tel Aviv and most importantly in Yafa, one of the most vibrant cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities of the eastern Mediterranean at the time that Tel Aviv was being built. However, conserving Tel Aviv as a modernist city sometimes meant preserving the image of Yafa as an eclectic Middle Eastern backdrop against which the supposed whiteness of Tel Aviv was to shine. The CDA explored the Max Liebling House as an illustrative nexus of the complex history of the so-called White City.