We are delighted to present a local and extended version for the Israeli Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. At Artpoprt’s gallery we’ve broaden the scope of the exhibition so you can also find additional research materials and short stories that were written especially for it.

The Urburb – a neologism referring to the mesh of the urban and suburban – characterizes the great majority of residential areas in contemporary Israel. The Urburb is a fragmented mosaic composed of the early-20th century garden-city, rural settlements, mid-20th 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 a large and diverse population; to spread throughout the country while converging and closing-in; and to reconnect to the land via a top-down planning system that treats the surface as a clean slate.

The Urburb is more than an architectural phenomenon; it is a state of mind and a form of living. Swinging between two parallel vectors – repetitive actions...