Revitalizing the beachfront: The architects behind Tel Aviv's port and promenade - interview

It’s hard to imagine the Tel Aviv of today without the namal (port) or the tayelet (promenade).

The two projects are included in the exhibition “Building the Sea: Werner Josef Wittkower and the Planning of Tel Aviv’s Shoreline” now on view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which explores the relationship between the city and the sea as they have developed over the past century.

Their designers are Ganit Mayslits Kassif and Udi Kassif, two of three architects who make up Mayslits Kassif Roytman (MKR Architects, along with Maor Roytman). We originally met, by chance, at the exhibition, next to the screened video of her explaining about their projects, and the idea for this interview was quickly cemented.

In a conversation with the Magazine, I ask the Kassif duo (partners of 34 years in work and in life) to share their experiences and personal views on the interplay between urban architecture and the Tel Aviv coastline.

The Tel Aviv Port project was awarded the 2010 Rosa Barba European Landscape Architecture Prize. All of their White City-based projects reflect on the local mentality and, moreover, influence it, changing local behaviors. They created an intermediary space for urban leisure activity and, as they said, an open stage for impromptu performers and creative activities.

The steps of their promenade – stretching over 2.5 kilometers – made the beach accessible at every point. Thousands of Tel Avivians jog, walk, read books, drink wine or coffee, enjoy direct contact with the sea, and admire sunsets while sitting on the wooden benches, stairs, or the wavy stones of the promenade and port of Tel Aviv. In Udi Kassif’s words, “Everyone has a right to see the view of the horizon.”

The port project was completed in 2008, and the promenade in 2018. It was not just a design makeover from their neglected and forgotten areas, but a completely different new concept that connected the city’s culture with its beachfront life. Many Tel Avivians and millions of tourists visiting Israel in the last decade have been exploring it every day.

Before we talk about your landscape architectural ideas, how do you remember the shores of Tel Aviv when you were children or teenagers?

Ganit Mayslits Kassif (GMK): I remember my mother’s stories. She used to live next to it, on Hakovshim Street. She always described it as a run-down part of the city (in the ‘50s), but she liked the sea very much. My main memory, which influenced our concept of the waterfront in Tel Aviv later on, is the opening of the Chich promenade [named for Shlomo “Chich” Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv from 1974–1993 (“ch” as in cheer)]. Following the previous degradation of the area, he started the third phase of the renovation of the Tel Aviv waterfront.

The first two in the 1930s and the ’60s?

GMK: In the ‘30s, the promenade of the Bauhaus city was born, with many great architects and the idea of a new city by the sea, with a romantic urban approach: coffee shops, buildings with terraces into the sea, some gardens, and a little promenade – but with a wall.

What do you mean by the wall?

Udi Kassif (UK): The seawall. Two to three meters high.

GMK: The promenade was much higher than the beach, and it was detached; there wasn’t a flow between [the beach and] the city. There was some distancing blockade between the seashore and the city life above it.

So you had to take the stairs to go to the beach, in specific places?

UK: In the early days [in the ‘30s], the beach was not a place for recreation as we see it today. We have pictures of people, Eastern Europeans, coming to Tel Aviv, sitting in their best suits on the sand; in some photos, they all sat with their backs to the sea. [They were] most of the people walking on the promenade – spazieren [Yiddish], as the Yekke Jews called it.

Mayor Meir Dizengoff, back in the 1930s, noticed the potential of Tel Aviv and wanted to use the coastline as a selling point of the city.

GMK: That’s true – it started with Dizengoff in the ’30s, but then slowly became derelict. The ‘60s and ‘70s were a time of degradation and neglect of the waterfront. This is when my mother grew up. The sea climate was considered a hostile environment and had a lot of maintenance issues.

UK: It’s interesting to realize that Hayarkon Street was still a place for prostitution and neglect in the ‘70s, like Neveh Sha’anan now; nobody wanted to live there. It was tough to live next to the sea with lots of rust and bad windows. There was salt everywhere in the apartments; it was a run-down area.

In those years there was a lot of sewage entering the sea, from what I read.

GMK: The sewage, wind, rust, and maintenance that you need to put into buildings next to the sea – all these things created neglect at the waterfront of Tel Aviv. In the ’80s, Chich reintroduced the concept of a waterfront city. Together with architect Yaakov Rechter, he started a project later called the Chich Promenade or the Lahat Promenade.

UK: Legend says that they had to put down a huge sewage pipe from the north of Tel Aviv to near Rishon Lezion. Rechter told Chich: ‘Why don’t we do a promenade on top of this sewage line? We’re going to dig out everything, anyway.’ So because of the sewage, they made the promenade in the ‘80s.

How close is this to the truth?

UK: Quite. We know it because we had to work there… but Rechter had a tremendous influence on the promenade of Tel Aviv; he invented the promenade site as we know it. He also created a unique design for this public space that became something many people like and recognize as Tel Aviv. For many years, the aerial view of the Tel Aviv promenade, with the circles of Rechter, became a symbol. So in a way, he made the beach of Tel Aviv iconic.

GMK: The Rechter promenade: His concept was quite similar to that of [the French city of] Nice and the French Riviera.

UK: Rechter was also impressed and influenced by the Copacabana promenade in Rio.

GMK: Yes, but urban-wise, it’s the same concept as the southern French promenade: a wall between the city and the sea. You asked about our experiences. One of these generational experiences for me was when I was in my 20s [in the army], and this promenade in Tel Aviv opened up as a new place in the city, with plastic chairs spread on it. Suddenly we had a place in our city where we could come with friends and sit for free in front of the sea…

UK: …and drink beer or eat watermelon.

What years are we talking about?

GMK: The 1980s. That was something like ‘Wow!’ We had a place that hosted us, the city space became generous; it had some new kindness.

Were the beach cafés already there?

UK: They were just built.

GMK: In the beginning, we used to go there a lot, but with time, less. The people who came there were mostly from outside of Tel Aviv.

So was it more like a tourist destination?

GMK: Yes – we, as Tel Avivians, didn’t like to go there. And also those first chairs disappeared. And then the rest of the bars and the cafés were more touristic – not our cup of tea.

UK: But it was interesting to see that there was no way to sit in front of the sea, apart from a few benches along the promenade, or the planters that made people sit with their backs to the sea.

Those people were missing one of the most important things about living in Tel Aviv: watching the sunset.

UK: Yeah, exactly! So you could either stand and see the sunset or sit with your back to the sea!

I understand that image was stored in your subconscious when you created the stairs along the entire promenade. There is an iconic 1972 Israeli movie Metzitzim by Uri Zohar, in which he starred with Arik Einstein. How do you think the culture of the beach has changed since then?

UK: Wow, a tremendous change. At the time of Metzitzim, the whole of Israel was much less formal. People were trying to make places for themselves. ‘Metzitzim’ [peeking, peekers] is also a kind of culture that has been created by the kind of people who live on the beach; all their life is related to the sea, the beach, and the Yarkon River.

We were 2.5 million people in Israel then, now almost 10 million, and we have very few unassigned areas in the cities. The pressure of the construction in the cities makes every corner designed, and not always in the best way. We hardly have fringes or edges in the city that are not already designated for this or that kind of activity.

As you said, the significant architectural change started in the ’80s, shortly after the reality depicted in the movie.

GMK: The ’80s were the beginning of the revolution, but it didn’t stand up to its promise because not many people were using the promenade. It didn’t reflect the culture of the city. We aimed to create a place where the local culture...

UK: ...the locals and tourists...

GMK: ...Yes, but I think the tourists came after. Our drive in both projects was to create a public space open to interpretation and the spontaneity of the local culture of Tel Aviv.

The reconstruction of the promenade started in 2012 and ended in 2018 – I’ve been watching it almost step by step. How much time did you spend on the project before that?

UK: I think we worked around four years up to 2012. The client of the promenade’s Atarim Group – a company of Tel Aviv Yaffo Municipality. But obviously, we had to go through lots of committees (local, district, and national) that deal with the beaches in Israel.

Your promenade has two levels. People can walk on the sand and another level above it.

UK: Yes, two horizontal movements, one above the other, and in between them we have these terraces that one can sit on or go down through all along the promenade. It was very important for us that you can connect to the beach from every point – and that there should be many points accessible for the disabled and prams [baby carriage, stroller]. The in-between zone (between the city and the sea-level promenades) was crucial for us; we wanted to create a new zone in Tel Aviv where you could just hang out, watch the sunset or watch other people play [beach sports], and rest a little or read a book. Therefore, we also made special points where you can sit in the shade on these wooden easy chairs embedded in the terraces that were casting large shadows.

Apart from the sitting stairs and various umbrellas, another unique element of the promenade is the covered roofs of cafés (in the archive pictures, the roofs weren’t aesthetically pleasing), which are a part of the design and serve as decks. How did you come up with this?

UK: The buildings were there, but nobody went up there, so it was a dead area at the most precious points. And since we had the notion of curves and deck dunes from the port, we thought it would be beautiful to bring the hills of the port to connect the beach of Tel Aviv in the same language: the same notion of the undulating landscape. Now it’s a very nice point to sit in and observe the beach and the horizon.

GMK: I think that good architecture works with what there is and tries to make the best of it. This whole project was the action of three very simple urban ideas: to connect the city to the sea with the sitting stairs and create a free flow all along it for 2.5 kilometers; to reuse the neglected rooftops; and to create a sand-level promenade. I think this is essential to our well-being: to be connected to nature and the wilderness. We are attracted to the beach because we suddenly see the horizon.

UK: Everyone should have the right to a view of the horizon, into infinity – and a beach city must make it accessible and allow people to observe it as much as possible...

GMK: ...with the best sort of public hospitality.

On various occasions, I’ve hosted people on the beach. It became part of my Tel Aviv lifestyle.

GMK: Exactly! And that was, I think, the most important thing we’ve done in our career. When we worked on the port project as architects, we served as the hosts who created the public space. We called it ‘the urban living room’ because we have these small apartments – many people live in studios – and the city is becoming more expensive, so they meet in public spaces.

Tel Aviv Port, the project for which you received the prestigious Rosa Barba European Landscape Architecture Prize in 2010, became such a space!

In the archive pictures of the port area, vacant for many years, it looks like a slum. Now it is full of life: Docaviv movies, concerts, kaballat Shabbat, yoga training, cafés, and restaurants. People of all demographics just come there to relax, to watch the sea.

GMK: I remember at 4 a.m., just before we submitted this project for the competition bid (a sort of a turning point for us in our practice), we wrote something like, ‘Tel Aviv needs a place without programs, a place that we call “void,” that is open to interpretation and would become a sort of stage for a new culture. [It] would have a kind, generous and hospitable role that bridges the city and the beach, like a hybrid between them (although you’re in a city space, you could sit and lie down on the ground, like at the beach).’

We started to develop this idea, to create architecture that makes you feel at home in the world; at home in your city, in your public space. That’s why whenever we see somebody who falls asleep on the stairs or the deck, we feel: ‘Wow! This guy feels at home here!’ Also, whenever we see people spontaneously being creative.

I remember one day I came out of the office, and I saw a young woman dancing on the deck, on her own, and I felt: ‘Well you know, this is what we meant to create: a place that inspires, as Udi said, that makes us awake.’

Did you bring the mentality of Tel Avivians closer or did you help to create it even more?

GMK: No, I think we only provided a place for it to grow. Our principle is to create architecture that allows for things to happen, a breeding ground that provokes the local culture to grow and develop; it triggers people’s creativity and spontaneous actions – this is what makes us all feel that we belong.

Like thousands of Tel Avivians and tourists, I benefit from your unique projects. I have walked through the promenade and to the port many times, and I watched innumerable sunsets sitting on the stairs you built. Thank you for creating these places and for meeting me again.

GMK: Thank you for your interest!

To learn more about the Tel Aviv Museum exhibition: www.tamuseum.org.il/en/exhibition/building-sea-werner-josef-wittkower-and-planning-tel-avivs-shorelin/