Arieh Sharon - Tel Aviv in The 1930s

Tel Aviv in The 1930s

In 1931, he returned to Palestine and opened his architectural office in Tel Aviv, while Gunta Stölzl emigrated to Switzerland with their daughter, Yael. Sharon’s first commission in Tel Aviv was the construction of four pavilions for the Histadrut (General Federation of Labour) exhibit at the Levant Fair in 1932. These pavilions, for which he had won first prize in an architectural competition, were composed of modular wooden elements, progressively growing in height and length, covered by jute. There followed a series of buildings in the so-called international style which would help define the city's architecture as the "White City." In addition he built residential cooperative housing estates, private houses, the central administrative seat of the Histadrut in Tel Aviv, and in 1936 his first hospital for 60 beds, near Tel Aviv.

Sharon’s housing estates, known as Meonot Ovdim in Hebrew, were built around large garden patios in the center, a continuous group layout, a public space for the residents, while communal services, such as kindergarten, laundry, shops and synagogue, were placed on the ground-floor.

A distinctive feature of Tel Aviv’s town-scape are the pilotis on which most of the apartment buildings in the residential quarters are raised. This feature was achieved on the part of several avant-garde architects in the early thirties in a fierce struggle against the existing municipal bye-laws. The spacious voids between the pillars created a shaded street-scape, added to the natural ventilation during the hot summer days and connected the pavements with the green areas.