Bauhaus style: The architecture of Hebrew labor in British Mandate Tel Aviv, Palestine

This study examines the construct of 'Hebrew labor' --as the ideological, philosophical and strategic underpinning of the Nationalist, Zionist, Socialist settlement in Palestine. The thesis proposes that 'Hebrew labor' was manifest in the institutional structures and buildings of the Histadrut and Labor Movement and asserts that what is typically referred to as 'Bauhaus Style' a term referencing the transference of European architectural modernism must be understood as an architecture that is unique to the context of the Zionist project in Palestine and that it is manifest as the architecture of 'Hebrew labor'.;The object of inquiry of this dissertation is the architecture of 'Hebrew labor' in the institutional buildings developed for and by the Histadrut in Tel Aviv of the 1920's and 30s. Examinations of the Histadrut buildings focus on the particular characteristics, practices and technologies, the manufacture and distribution of materials and infrastructure as well as in the programmatic criteria and relationship to land.;Revisionist political and social histories of the Yishuv that have developed alongside critical platforms, (post) modern and colonial theoretical discourses and analytical interrogations of the 'dilemma of modernity' serve as frames of reference for the research. The intention of the study is to produce a more thorough and nuanced reading of an architectural landscape of the 'White City' and the specific qualities of the built environment of the modern Hebrew city in British Mandate, Palestine, that has for too long been defined in purely stylistic terms.