Functionalism between the Field of Settlement and Design Discipline

As a result of Yalan’s background and complementary institutional engagements, he developed a heterogeneous functionalist design vocabulary. Similar to Sharon’s, this vocabulary articulated issues of programmatic reflection and minimization with issues of comprehensive, regional planning. In his search for the optimal minimum measures of first stages of community planning, Yalan, like Sharon, couples references to the field of settlement with more or less disciplinary approaches to design.251

Just as Sharon’s does, Yalan’s vocabulary articulates a common idea in Zionist territorial development, in particular as it was carried under the Jewish Agency for Israel.252 He expresses this idea in the book’s introduction:

Our slogan was, “a village a day.” We had no choice; we acted according to the words of the bible: “let us do and hear” [a translation of na’ase ve’nishma, a biblical dictum stressing that practice should precede reflection, m.h.]. We gathered together highly qualified experts in various fields who were willing to work under leaders with vision, who cooperated with the settlers and were able to achieve practical results in short time.

understanding of Gieryn’s model of scientific knowledge as dependent upon credibility contests occurring through science’s cultural sites, and more particularly his emphasis on the primary roles of the sites of the “field” and the “lab,” see Gieryn (1999). See also Kohler’s work applying this argument to the field of biology: Robert Kohler, Landscapes & Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-field Border in Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

250 _{This trait seems also to some extent particular to Yalan’s professional trajectory and distinguishes him from}

contemporary rural development architects such as Charles Polony.

251 _{On the centrality of the metaphor of the field in anthropology and in applied anthropology of development see}

Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds., “Introduction,” in Anthropological Locations, Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997), 28-9.

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We learned through doing. The feeling that we were participating in great work, building both the “man” and the country, gave us wings. (Italics added.)253

That Sharon likewise stresses the imperative of action, understood in idealist and cultural terms, suggests it was central to the self-understanding of architects working for land development institutions. In this, both authors referenced the pioneering settler figure that had immense power in all walks of Israeli life at the time. In Yalan’s manual and theory, this imperative prompts non-theoretical, accumulative descriptions.254 It grounds Yalan’s functionalist agenda, through the notion of execution related to implementation (bitzuiyut) that typically bracketed pioneer practicality in the aftermath of Israeli independence.255

Yalan claimed functionalism in operational and economic terms, as the glossary with which the book opens suggests:

Farm - single agricultural enterprise, is an operational, economic production unit, the basis by which land, which includes the farmyard, fields, pastures, plantations, forests and water resources, is utilized…. Farmyard (farmstead) - The place where the farm buildings necessary for the operation of the farm are situated, usually including the farmer’s house. (4) (Figure 3.20)

Without an expressive lens such as Sharon uses, this passage stresses a theorized rationale based on applied research and survey. It also included notions such as

253 _{With even less direct reference to the idea of a straightforward practicality, the following quotation from the}

Introduction also reveals Yalan’s tacit understanding of design and planning under the constraints of field operability: “The plots have to be laid out parallel to the contour lines because it’s best that the plough furrows run horizontally and are as long as possible…. [I]t’s obvious to anyone who works in this field; there’s no need for any special investigation.” in The Design of Agricultural Settlements Technological Aspects of Rural Community Development, 3. Moreover, the type of rationale expressed in the citations above conjoins the rationale of bare existence encountered in Sharon’s and Zevi’s formulations (i.e. the thing whose value is predicated solely upon its existence).

254 _{The biblical dictum Yalan used here evolved into an idiomatic expression in modern Hebrew. For the place}

the bible occupied in Israeli popular and academic culture in the two decades after independence, see Anita Shapira, “Introduction,” in Bible and Israeli Identity (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005).

255 _{Mitchell Cohen, ibid, chapter 1. For Raanan Weitz’s focus on settlement planning as a domain of bitzuyiut,}

see Weitz, ibid, 9. The Technion Polytechnique in Haifa provides a further exploration of the consolidation of this work ethos, as it is evidenced through the institution’s official publications.

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components, functional unit, adequate form, organizational optimum, economic organization, and economic layout. These notions consisted of a reflection on location and layout, and combination. These terms denoted Yalan’s distributional perspective on design, as well as principles pertaining more overtly to systems design and development thinking.256 Such principles include dynamic and static planning and stages of

development.257 _{All in all, these terms communicated a reflection on the optimum spatial}

distribution, implementation, and development of designed variables. It was pursued through the use of measured, geometric drawings as much as of abstract programmatic diagrams.258 These terms framed the notion of building as an operational unit and a component in a system of entities at various scales designed to support a variety of uses throughout the rural sector (Figure 3.21, 3.22).

Sharon’s culturally expressive approach bracketed the optimal minimum that he identified in emblematic rural production facilities and temporary shacks through notions such as simple, primary, and economic. Yalan’s technically oriented education at the Architectural Association and the Hessische Baugewerkschule der Technischen Lehranstalten Offenbach am Main, on the other hand, had not exposed him to the cultural

256 _{On design as an art of distribution, pertaining to the ways that lines and angles partition a plan and define the}

configuration of spatial limits, rooms and sequences of spaces, see Jacques Fredet, De l’usage de la Géométrie en Architecture – Illustré par l'étude de Quelques Tracés Urbains et Maisons de Rapport à Paris au XIX Siècle et D'autres Exemples, le Tout Accompagné de Considérations sur les Catégories Architecturales, le Code de Représentation et le Dessin d'Architecture (Paris : I.E.R.A.U, 1977), 26-8. The idea of distribution as design’s syntactical dimension was central to French neo-classical architectural theory.

257 _{This second group also comprised the following terms: functional differentiation, static and dynamic}

planning, optimizational systems, stages of development (to be correlated with the former), agro-technical,

organizational principles, location and layout.

258 _{This point also clarifies the change that occurs in the formulation of the task of planning cooperative villages}

before and after independence, specifically in comparison with the writing of Richard Kaufman and his emphasis on the need for an “organically orchestrated” design.

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discourse of the Neue Sachlichkeit.259 _{This may explain his less-rhetorical use of the}

notions of building, construction, and economy than Sharon’s, as well as the centrality of survey and drawing in his publications.

Yalan’s operational understanding of optimal and economic outlines depended, as Sharon’s did, on the comprehensive nature of his practice. This practice consisted of surveying, designing, and coordinating the multiplicity of design scales. His operational economic vocabulary and modes of its visual codification resulted, moreover, from encounters between design knowledge and land development practices and expertise; between, on the one hand, approaches such as Existenzminimum, multi-use and Central Place Theory, and on the other hand, the Jewish Agency development research. The latter unfolded through in-field experiments and their analysis and conceptualization in what formed the institution’s “labs.”260 All in all, operational economy expressed a design rationale securing, preserving, and translating the logic of cooperative habitat in the aftermath of independence. More precisely, this logic resulted from the ways Yalan’s coordination of scales for Jewish Agency research institutions strategically used disciplinary tools, and distinct modes of codification – predominantly precise geometric outlines and diagrams.

Survey-based drawings and the codification of new construction became central to Yalan’s work at the smaller scales. His research at the Jewish Agency Technical

259 _{Little is known about Yalan’s single year at the AA (1921-1922). Yalan’s diploma certificate from the}

Hessische Baugewerkschule der Technischen Lehranstalten Offenbach am Main notes the following classes: design of buildings, building construction, building practice and construction policies, construction material practice, statics practice of form, free-style (hand) drawing, geometry, estimation of cost and construction organization, German as a business and commercial language, Mathematics, measuring and mapping, natural science, and arithmetic. In Yael Ben Moshe, private collection.

260

See discussion in chapter 4. These included the Rural Building Research Center facility in Alenby Street (affiliated with the Technion from 1959) and the research facility at the Jewish Agency campus in Rechovot.

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Department and, later, the Rural Building Research Center, affected the logic of this work. Its surveys employed agro-techniques in pre-state cooperative farmsteads as well as new developments in the international professional literature (mainly west European, German, English and French) in the field described. These surveys were then synthesized into new standardized models – codified through the term of agro-techniques – that facilitated improvements in work operations in the cooperative village farmsteads.261

Yalan’s treatment of regional planning is based on a variant of Central Place Theory. This theory had been the lingua franca of the state’s physical and economic planning agencies. It was also the major pillar of the applied research and planning projects the Research Center for Settlement had carried out since its inception in 1960.262 The Center has used Central Place Theory to survey and analyze the distribution of cooperative and regional services in settlements.263 Central Place Theory analysis of the optimal clusters of urbanized poles organized around small sized towns provided the Research Center on Settlement calculations regarding the allocation of shared resources and settlement infrastructure. It supported a reflection on minimal yet flexible spatial

                                                                                                                261

The Rural Building Research Center promoted the dissemination of agro-technical improvements in Israel. Until the early 1950s, the dissemination of rural production facilities models was primarily managed through the Volcany agricultural experimentation station in Rechovot (and to a large extent by veterinarian Raanan Volcay, son of Ytzhak Elazari Volcany, who founded the station in 1921). For the history of mandate-era agricultural research preceding the establishment of the Volcany research station, see Penslar Derek, Zionism and Technocracy: the Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). Other sites for knowledge dissemination in the field of production facilities were the Journal of the Calf Breeders, and Ha’sade (the field) journal published between 1932 and the 1960s. Yalan’s own engagement in the field of rural production facilities consisted of a primary intervention as an architect in this field, and led to further dissemination of knowledge both inside and outside of Israeli. See discussion in chapter 4.

262 _{Smadar Sharon attributes to the Jewish German planner Joseph Tischler the introduction of this model to the}

planning-team-tank in the Circle for the Settlement Reform preceding the first national planning unit: “Planners, State and the Design of the National Space,” in Theory and Criticism 29 (2006): 31-58. As discussed also in chapter 4, Central Place Theory was used in Yalan’s plan for the Taanach (1953); it was also the basis of Raanan Weitz’s 1954 plan for the Lachish region. (Smadar Sharon, 2012, ibid).

263 _{Such as schools, nurseries, synagogues, grocery shops, temporal instructional agricultural gardens and in-situ}

instructors’ housing. Other public amenities were distributed at the level of what planners named a “dormant regional center”. These services included, tractor stations and produce distribution and collect facilities.

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arrangement, and on territorial and social development and modernization. This consisted of an analysis regarding the correlation between settlement investment, phasing, and amortization and between settlers’ gradual absorption into “civilized life” or democracy.

264 _{Weitz identified these last ideals, to a large extent, with issues of social productivity}

and participation in the Israeli regional cooperative economy. It was under such rationales that Yalan’s large-scale diagrams, small-scale surveys, and agro-techniques sought to increase work efficiency and productivity in the rural sector. His subtitle,

Technological Aspects of Rural Community Development, reflects this coupling of agro-

technology with regional and community development.

3.3.4. From the Farmstead to the Cooperative Region – Rural Building as a