Communal Child Rearing in Kibbutz Beit Alpha 1920-1940: A Case Study Approach to the Study of the Relations between the Built Environment and Ideologies

This study aims to understand the reciprocal relations between contested Zionist ideologies and the architectural formulation of Kibbutz Beit Alpha (1922), one of the first kibbutzim in Israel, which was known for its highly ideological community. The study focuses on the processes that brought about the making of the first permanent building of Kibbutz Beit Alpha, the Children House (Beit ha-Yeladim), known to epitomise kibbutz’ unique social structure and educational framework. It was the first permanent building of its kind in the Kibbutz movement. Scholarship concerned with the relationship between ideology and architecture during the early years of the Kibbutz movement focuses primarily on the professional perspective of architects who were employed by the Zionist settling agencies which helped establish the early kibbutzim. Kibbutz architecture in these studies, is rendered as the physical manifestation of a Zionist-Socialist ideology whilst marginalising the broader sphere of architectural production employed by kibbutz members themselves; the ways they understood their built environment, shaped it and were shaped by it. Looking afresh at Kibbutz Beit Alpha, this study employs a range of archival materials which are not part of the canonical material of architectural history inquiry and go beyond the professional correspondences, plans and sketches regarding Kibbutz planning and buildings. The study reveals an alternative narrative to the architectural articulation of Kibbutz Beit Alpha ideologies and their impact on everyday life. It provides a nuanced reading of the emerging kibbutz buildings — as both processes and as artefacts — and demonstrates that architecture, in its broader meaning, played a prominent role in the ideological conflict between the Zionist movement and the members of Kibbutz Beit Alpha, resulting in architectural propositions which embodied an ideological struggle rather than a unified ideological manifestation. The research findings suggest that the settlers’ Zionist-anarchist ideology created and employed an architectural realm which was overlooked by architects and was eventually eliminated when an early modernist architectural tradition for kibbutz buildings was adopted by the mainstream Zionist narrative. This study contributes not only to the architectural historiography of Kibbutz Beit Alpha, but also informs our theoretical understanding of the relations between architecture and ideologies by considering a more comprehensive network of stakeholders involved in the architectural planning, production and occupation of a built environment.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Author dc:creator

• Sarfatti, Orit

Contributors dc:contributor

• Vellinga, Marcel
• Gold, John
• Rowden, Emma

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/8mn5-7c81

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:449a91b7-ece1-4e0a-ad1b-4a14d46ce453:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1