Urburb, a neologism referring to the contemporary mesh of urban and suburban sprawl, is the end result of one hundred years of modernist planning in Israel. The urburb is a fragmented mosaic composed of early twentieth century garden-city, agrarian settlements, mid-century social housing, and the generic residential typologies of the past two decades.
This hybrid manifests the conflicting demands of the modernist machine functioning in the old-new land: to create small egalitarian communities while accommodating large and diverse population, to spread-out while closing-in, and to reconnect to the land but to do so through a top-down planning system that treats the surface as a clean sheet of paper.
This top-down approach is emblematic not only of the Zionist ideal of centralized planning, but also of the modernist desire to constantly reshape and reinvent the present. The Urburb is more than an architectural phenomenon, it is a state of mind and a form of life. Today, in the wake of one hundred years of modernism, it is time to explore its dynamics and understand the life it has fostered.
The installation explores these themes this not only through the data displayed but also through its performative affect. The visitor enters a modernist construction site, filled with automatic machines that sketch on sand, erase, and sketch again. Each scenario takes about three to five minutes, and every printer presents a few scenarios grouped under one theme—overplanning, evolution of buildings, pattern language, and erase and print dynamics.
Participants: Ori Scialom, Roy Brand, Keren Yeala Golan
Commissioner: Michal Gov, Arad Turgeman.
Curators: Ori Scialom, Roy Brand, Keren Yeala Golan.
Deputy Curator: Edith Kofsky
- Open:
Saturday, 07 June 2014 - Close:
Sunday, 23 November 2014 - Address:
Giardini, Castello, 30122 Venezia - Opening hour:
10am – 6pm - Closing day:
Monday - Admission:
Ticket - Transport:
Giardini stop - Photo credits:
Courtesy of the Curatorial Team
