I am parttime professor across the river in arlington virginia. By come way of the philosopher whose project written 1927 through 1940 complete the sketches out the parisian city life in the 19th century that is the cover passages of people watching with and made such a pastime in the boulevard or the streets proper and in some ways this biographical brainteaser in detective story is not like another story is an intimate view into jerusalem is one of the most beloved in troubled cities with free architect eric mendelssohn this book examines the way they mingle and complied as the review favor fleet puts it to bring down the jerusalem do diversity of the christian garrison and lived in a period of political upheaval tried to make up their minds and responsible for building the topple their region civilization providing another tier to the ecological history. Author of the house of windows in my happiness bears no relation to happiness which i thank you did a talk on that here also the coauthor the lost and found world of cairo that was named the jewish book of the year. I plan now to sit down and pay close attention to duty nine and ask that you do the same. [applause] im sorry i cannot control the brush fire but a key for waiting i will tell you about something that happened to meet. A few of years ago when i went to mail a package at the Central Post Office i and theyre almost every day for the year 25 years everybody is charitable though long the lines were long and finally reach the counter i handed the clerk my package should probably heard might foreign accent grab at the package read through it on the scale should plastisol overall every single i said what are you doing . She just looked in the with utter contempt and announced we dont have time for ascetics. Is a common idea and especially in jerusalem with politics than violence and ethnic stripes it is viewed as an excuse for ugliness and other types. But now on this occasion it hit me we dont have time for us statics aesthetics by halftime and i dont think historically so the words of the clerk were extremely irritating to me but they provoked debate we want to understand what did she mean that we dont have time for aesthetics . would walk around the city and i would look at buildings are just to walk in think in my mind we dont have time for aesthetics so what does that say about the city . And what i came to initially the people that seem to build the buildings for the first half of the 20th century and into that period one of the end of world war war i and to take control of palestine that people who built the best of those but it wasnt that turned its nose up at the question of context but the aesthetics that took into account the historical and geographical context and topographical context to say it wasnt a luxury but a means of survival. So that i eventually come around to write the book is really about what it means in a city like jerusalem when it is the conflict over everything else. I writing specifically about a architect and what it means to construct this something positive. In the same thing holds for an activist your teacher. The book is biographical to focus that these all caved from somewhere else in these four ideas and they managed a fascinating fusion an end what is interesting that nobody will deny that these are in trouble and that people very proud of these buildings but during the time of the chivvies men there is some version of tin in the of violent fashion in the city told them with great sensitivity it will make it very hard to work here. And i will explain what i mean by that but i will take you on a fast walk quickly that is the main road of the modern city in jerusalem said the middle of the 19th century it was a walled city. In the just so happens that i can give you a little tour of the biographies with one way or another between politics and aesthetics it is a very small area to the u. S. Across time in take a few detours as well. City walk just a few hundred meters you will see the first building. With the National Bank went up in 1939 it was the eighth glow Palestine Bank the sole bank in jerusalem at seven stories one of the most dignified public buildings and also to the hill behind with that incredible awareness ended is known great surprise that those responsible if you know, of Eric Mendelsohn has an International Reputation and was assessed with context. His office was one of the most businesses and busiest but his most famous building was his first that was known as the einstein tower is a strange building and an interesting building late a spaceship expressionist architecture it is not my own favorite but i prefer buildings like this this is what he built in berlin in the late twenties. To meet that has an incredible sense of motion is part of the largest building appeals like a boat moving down the street the way he handles the quarters in the building of the curve sandy feel that also in this building which is also one of my favorites. For the publisher and cultural patrons and together to build a series of Department Stores around germany with the project the building Department Stores but of leader of the first president of the state of israel but the for them but to be quite fascinated by palestine in he found himself drawn magnetically to this landscape and as a jew and architect and a sense he has a tribal affiliation the he was interested but they didnt work out at the time but he was also interested in a serious way of the wider banditry the region and how palestine sat is not a region with distinguished artist from various fields to be involved in a project of the european mediterranean cabinet if it ever came into existence with a bed after riviera type sell any tickets time to get to palestine but then everything changed overnight 1933 he and his wife basically fled berlin with a suitcase as hitler had come into power they knew they had to get out as his possible. That they went to holland and the london but there was a question would he go to palestine . And then to be offered these commissions to hold out the possibility of a hospital and i want to read a short passage from the book for a ride around this period the team 34 he just arrived in town and has taken one preliminary walk from where they want to build a hospital if he figures out what to do with himself. Was this the beginning of exile or the end . The ones to marcion paid toasted architect had to wonder as he goes from hotel room. A visa had fled what controlled the atmosphere to step into cairo for a few weeks you for returning to england to help their daughter with their wedding and gave perspective as he contemplated their future in their peoples future. He found time to marvel at what appeared over the city with no presence of the past and future he also paused to take in the sense of the winter flowers they moved him and would circle to say is its our place here . But he wasnt really asking her he knew the state of all the world you primary concerns he answered himself closely with himself in mind every day i come to regard people in the field i little more as my brothers. And with his life into a mitt with that passion that the construction and he saw thrown up he felt less sensitive visit to mental and moral like jim self and stubborn and august. A few days after the initial site he returned for another look. Eager to frame the master plan for his excited to come forth in a sketch but it prompted nothing short of a whole have visit the mall of the guide given piece of country and has been violated to the incompetence is self complacency and it makes me hostage to antarctica and insecure. Said he had decided to stay. So the office that he found was this one it was quite remarkable and looks like that einstein tower. Of the notice rounded by hotels. And got down to work and was completely reconfiguring the architecture to be responsible but it wasnt just moved into would you place but the possibilities so the very first possibility is that obviously this is not that big as the movie house budget and still see the curve spitter thing has changed with the typography and to figure out how to make the garden in elaborately landscaped. Obviously there much more restrained with that social construct the he cannot allow himself as a great big german building and trying to deal with the hot sun to figure the possibilities of the climate. And then it must be built in stone. So this is a very big challenge of reinforced concrete to think what it means to build this landscape. You get a sense of that his ego was not small and one of the things he expressed himself emphatically was either architect that landed in palestine that got under his skin he called these buildings bastard buildings it is not a virgin country people have been there and they figured out how to build that would be to us to learn from them. So even to escape from this project to hold campus with the medical school he is essentially trying to take a cue from bill local vernacular. Is a fusion of these that draw him so this building so that translation the way it is set into the hill in a gentle way show is shows the typography but he is deliberately echoing them. That is what they call the rest of the building so dry your own conclusion. [laughter] not surprising it wasnt a virgin country he made a very firm point to say that palestine is part of the arabian world to write about what he envisioned is a new 7 00 to bring arabs and jews together with this to say did not make him popular or mainstream as he builds the buildings the situation is getting harder and harder politically all types of things make it hard to construct their our fist fights about which workers will work on the construction site will lead the arabs or jews or labor zionist door members of the revisionist rightwing revisionists party . There are curfews and strikes and riots. This pertains to everyone not just him but it was making his life harder and harder thinking he had to get things done to redo the plants the havent forgotten but to go down the street a little ways and a little further to explain in 1936 and the arabs in palestine seeing what was happening now have been not only promised a National Home but now with hitlers rise it was flooded with new immigrants. So a result broken out against the jews there really the british you were responsible, i am making is very simple as a broad outline, against the british with a great deal of violence so then you can see this as the bank going up in the late 30s and the British Government finally issues the white paper in response to the results of what is going on to massively levitt judiciary gratian to palestine. And now as a result of the white paper the Jewish Population rises up with bedsprings industry with a fullfledged terrorist from the right wing underground and in may 1939 to implants several explosives pack packages there was a huge hole instantly put through was just dedicated the year before the bomb blast since an oddly enough is re had my irritating and counter but it just so happens that very week the bomb went off the base was next door it is unfortunate he is thinking of construction and theres all this destruction said he writes an article in the palestine post explaining what he means with the architecture people have a lot of other things on their mind talking how he meant to echo the stark verticals in the shape of his building to work into the hillside and how it is connected to the wider mediterranean area and the colored storefronts of damascus to contract those color schemes people were not see how theyre thinking of how this is going on but the bombing has rattled him severely. And one of an architectural importance the post office was a logical target the largest and costliest building put up by the entire mandate period and an emblem of foreign rule but what the terrorist could not see with us private stance in here he is with his job bogey in was the chief architect and also named for his distant ancestor a very british man a british person but the brit who went to canada and then during the First World War and never went back. And was deeply at home in the area of the wider mediterranean. And he was fascinated of this architecture somewhat to take you to show you a little bit of that he labeled as the palestine than hot townhouse with a dome on top he tries to figure it out for himself there is a lot of Amazing Things but to take this humble form to move into these official buildings and his majestys government edits the white house of palestine the home of the high commissioner that it clearly echoed the favorite building in the whole city now known as the rockefellers in here you see in the middle with the entire alphabet in different forms to have a byzantine churches and crusader forts in but he describes as one of his inspirations if you know, all of brough to look at the courtyard that harrison bill for the rockefellers. And now want to read just another piece of the book. It is almost as though to dream in the building the building seems to be symmetrical careful a geometry gives the illusion of matching one another as architectural display of light and shadow giving way to gentle art is with wide open spaces to take shape to jerusalem itself. Within one style of building to the towers of the landscape and the museum was actually a utopia but the bill being is aspirational not exactly as it was but in a better role that might be. That brings us back to the post office where you can see how it was the last building completed in jerusalem is a much more restrained building with those eastern influences it cannot see them in the picture but very heavy order mental doors to do Something Like mendelssohns with the hand cut blocks of stone as they do on the hillside also the assyrian form of masonry and to do this is a sophisticated way. Ha and unfortunately like mendelssohn to have of very hard time working in this highly politicized context and really there was no place for him in the struggle he was not partisan and all but he found a harder and harder to work in the confine some hot of this british bureaucratic setting to find out more and more and so he essentially fled the country without telling anyone. In fact, before the museum had its grim and opening hesitate their way that was ambushed and murdered he left before the grand opening of the post office and though bird that he uses in the also leave soon after into field lonelier and lonelier aesthetically and politically. They dont have paid peers but than a dozen rates but then he writes i am lost in the world but i also mentioned his ego there is no way they had not acknowledged his so against and that is certain point and then to make up his mind that there is no place here for a prima donna. So they packed their bags and set sail again for america i have time to go into all of that this is critical but these buildings which went up in the late thirties or in a conversation with each other from the outset. Those said think better still in that conversation so tied there is moving along. We now have the bank and the post Office Making a the way towards sigh of square making our way toward this building so with the most dignified building is in the area is very unusual for that part of town. The arched windows and also most notably the ceramics of master ceramicist that was brought by the british to the early stages and that is a whole other story didnt have time for now but these four elements are integrated that people identify completely with jerusalem everybody has these nameplates with the alternate jerusalem symbol in the man who put them in this building and will tell you about him it a minute to see past the junk and the clutter it was at the height of fashion at the behest of a wealthy christian arabs and that is something almost nobody remembers in a man who was called by one prominent israeli architect one of the best known in jerusalem but his name has been almost entirely raced. Here he is in a single picture we have known to exist and when i set out on this quest to do almost nothing it was slightly lunatic in the middle of the cause a more looking for traces i didnt know where or when he was born or family situations so i set out looking he left these little calling cards on the side of the buildings that he built it you can read them what is he telling us with these letters . First of policy is notable but it is a greek name and the palestinian arab context but with contemporary palestinian culture but in their back is very common end what does that mean . With the 1918 newspaper so as to try to put these together, to make some sort of sense of these clues. And in some ways it is more sweeping in extreme of the social heap those to be represented and that arabs are secondclass citizens but i am saying Something Different to have an identity that was flexible enough to not have any of these terms applied as the conversation goes on your either pro palestine are proisrael and it seems it did not pertain to the siepi has clinton but in terms of the other people that want to have contact with him not just the physical landscape of the human landscape so in order licking and mendelssohn and harrison is much more necessary to they commissioned in these buildings and what does that tell us about him . Almost entirely for jewish clients with all different religious and ethnic backgrounds of social you very quickly at the Main Commercial hub of west jerusalem and the same joys have to qualify it seems but it seems he made three or for these buildings there much more european road with columns and balconys and the air question is do concede that no way to have an office in one of these buildings for the greek speaking turkish doctor to come to jerusalem in ahead of the Municipal Hospital to be an aristocratic barter in the apartment house to those most of those great and manchin and it is of the way to go to the amount but this is much more alacrity eastern road detail and in 1922 with no reared copper roof for the first jewish judge you came to town in the late ottoman period so it is often called eclectic some people call that inconsistent to say that doesnt capture a leading or Border Crossing historically what has the best about jerusalem. I did it now with the board increase over the arab for the ottoman . Local or foreign was he all of these . And it seems it may well have been composed of the shifting attendees and then finishing with of the eclectic principal was the expression of the on dynamics it is seems harder and harder to squint. I am happy to answer questions. [applause] [inaudible] if. Did have to be a detective did not find as much as i want so i take that into the archives but the fact he was working for private clients meant there is less of a record then there would have spent even when mendelssohn worked with the private client with a huge office who saved everything he worked for the government but with private individuals it is not necessarily the same type of paper trail. That there wasnt so much preserved so there must be no architect but i found out things about him and also about the city. So it does still exist so to have a tremendous amount of help but then also of the greek patriarch so those are things i otherwise would not have seen but then i found the box that had all of his remains was not the case. But i did it come up completely emptyhanded. It is the architecture without architects to function and does so with the engineers so for whatever reason these private houses in the journals the Overall International figures in of way. But he was a local in that sense. So the rest of them were not interested. Please come to the microphone. I am a local College Student in the most recent book so what is most surprising and why . The most impossible to insert. [laughter] i cannot point to one big surprise dash feel the what sustained me was there was surprises every day in one small blade there wasnt one big revelation but i was in jerusalem for a long time away gets into a rut and another bus blowup and it is very repetitive in nonsense so i was trying to surprise myself by looking in these hidden corners. It is it that they are unknown but the Prime Minister and the generals because we dont have time for statics except to insert and a specific way but really in the daily who really in the archives that was great but you have a chance and in jerusalem israelis dont go because they are afraid so i am wandering around by myself. And i have read the book you really need to take a look at this book is well done. [applause] ,. [inaudible conversations] where we are standing now was that the entrance of the hotel it is relatively modern with respect to the entire history of the hotel the original entrance was a few hundred feet south and behind me you see our friend with the most famous landmarks of the area as long as he has said in existence he would point this way to arrowhead this brings for coming in to the