Architect and Engineer Dov Karmi Featured in Exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

TEL AVIV.- Dov Karmi (1905–1962) immigrated to Eretz-Israel from Zhvanets, Ukraine, aged 16, studied architecture and engineering in Ghent, Belgium (1925–1929), and established an architecture office in Tel Aviv (1932); he then worked in several partnerships, the last one with his son Ram Carmi and Zvi Melzer. He worked intensively in Tel Aviv, until his death, aged 57.

Karmi’s full body of work has never been exhibited. His heritage has been felt as a fragmented visibility in Tel Aviv’s public spaces, as variations of typically functional solutions through which he was able to implement intimacy within apartment blocks and public buildings. A disciple of the mellowed modernism of the Ghent School, Karmi imported to Israel a culture of tectonic and tactile sensitivity to detail, and developed an art of building unique in significant technical inventions.

The exhibition positions a concrete and documentary wandering space between the buildings Karmi planned and their iconic images, and joins physical and mental passages (some extrovert, some hidden) between building and street, between entrance and space, between Europe and Israel, between father and son. The concept of passage is the essence of the osmosis between outside and inside characteristic of the buildings of Karmi, whose architecture created body–space interfaces on a domestic–public scale.

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