Sharon, Aryeh
SHARON, ARYEH
SHARON, ARYEH (1900–1984), Israeli architect, among the most influential architects in Israel specializing in public buildings. Born in Poland, he went to Palestine in 1920 and joined kibbutz Gan Shemuel, working as a mason. Between 1926 and 1930, he studied architecture at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, and then worked for two years in Berlin. He returned to Ereẓ Israel in 1932 and planned and built many cooperative housing projects in Tel Aviv. He grasped the connection between the social and political views of the Bauhaus to the Zionist ideology of the Yishuv. He also planned the new Beilinson Hospital, the old and new Agricultural Center, the Bet Brenner building in Tel Aviv, the Ichilov Hospital, Tel Aviv, various buildings of the Weizmann Institute in Reḥovot, and of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His architecture was known for the relationship between his buildings and their natural surroundings and corresponded to the development of modern architecture over the years. It can be characterized as international and pragmatic. From 1948 to 1953 Sharon was head of the Israel Government Planning Department and as such was responsible for the design of many of the new settlements.
bibliography:
A. Elhanani, The Struggle for Independence. The Israeli Architecture in the Twentieth Century (1998).
[Abraham Erlik /
Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)]