The beauty of Israel's cookie-cutter buildings

The concrete blocks on stilts are nothing short of ugly especially considering the majority of them are in dire need of renovation and then you look at the more modern buildings, some of them are also ugly but they are at least trying to build HOMES where people want to live not just trying to give people a roof over their head. In some places they have realised this and redeveloped the buildings as best possible tried to make them look nice by getting rid of the cheap rows of tiles which fall off and usual cream paint The flimsy shutters which always break after a while have been replace by big bright windows you can look out of without the shutter getting in the way. Stilts have been enclosed with glass making the public area bigger and airy. In the early days of independence the country was facing an influx of Holocaust survivors and refugees from arab states so there was an urgent need to build lots of apartments and build them fast and the cookie cutters were cheap and easy to build. Those days are long gone and we need to start replacing cookie cutters which are not even practical in a day when people have cars. We need homes that are practical for 21st century living and are stylish. Time to start hiring some architects from outside Israel who understand how to take a plot of land and build something stylish, practical and doesn't look exactly the same as every other building on any street in any town. I look forward to a day when cookie cutters are an endangered species and we are all living in homes.

When I see block after block of box-shaped apartment buildings in Israel, I think "Gray Communist Cement". There is no need for uniformity to create comfort. Australian residential architecture offers lots of individuality and is some of the best in the world. Italian residential areas are studies in delightful chaos. Why must all Israeli apartments have the same size and shape windows? Almost no floor-to-ceiling nor wall-t-wall. Heat is not the problem - communist thinking is. And when you look at the dreadful interior design in many Israeli apartments, one realizes that Communist architecture put People at the bottom. But I agree that people may not want to live in "art" - especially if it is imposed by the Shenkin crowd of tasteless artistes. It may take a long time for this situation to improve, I'm afraid...