A dramatic presentation at the Eyal Ofer museum on the exhibit about the architect, Rami Carmi, brought us out of the house on a Friday afternoon.  The architecture of the country, especially Tel Aviv, had a great deal of ideology.  Brutalism, the look of naked concrete, was part of the idea of democracy – nothing pretentious, nothing impressive, everything practical and useful.  Except that it didn’t always work.  Most of the time it tried to invent new experiences, and sometimes couldn’t be based on earlier forms.  Inventing the wheel led to some big mistakes.  Just outside the museum, for instance, the Habima square, with its lack of shade in the burning sun, doesn’t quite work in the daytime.  

Still, you have to admire the inventiveness.  The dramatic presentation required the audience to move with their folding chairs from room to room, from floor to floor, often without explaining the reason for their move.  And yet it was riveting.

It helped me to see another angle of the experiment that was Tel Aviv.