Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Retsif Herbert Samuel

Completed in 1993, one of Tel Aviv’s most famous buildings is the 23-story Opera Tower. The Tower is situated at the corner of Allenby, Herbert Samuel and HaYarkon Streets. The building houses residential apartments, a shopping mall, a cinema, a fitness centre, a restaurant and a private swimming pool for the tower’s residents at the base of the building. The Opera Tower is built on the same place that the old Tel Aviv Opera House stood on and the exterior shape of the base building is identical to the one of the old Opera House.

Tel Aviv University Prof. Tzvi Harel, the good-natured architect who designed this post-modernist gravity-defying seaside apartment house, says that he is "proud of being insulted about it. I believe humor and criticism in architecture is very important." The four-story building was never meant to be more than imaginary. Harel sketched it for a 1980s newspaper column on the renaissance of Tel Aviv culture and art. Local entrepreneur Avraham Piltz loved the oddball design and brought it to life, though he died before the house was completed in the mid-1990s. "The idea was that since it was on the shore of Tel Aviv, which in those days was quite neglected, you could be an exhibitionist and expose yourself playfully in front of the sea," Harel says, pointing out that every room in each of the seven apartments has a sea view.

Tel Aviv University Prof. Tzvi Harel, the good-natured architect who designed this post-modernist gravity-defying seaside apartment house, says that he is "proud of being insulted about it. I believe humor and criticism in architecture is very important." The four-story building was never meant to be more than imaginary. Harel sketched it for a 1980s newspaper column on the renaissance of Tel Aviv culture and art. Local entrepreneur Avraham Piltz loved the oddball design and brought it to life, though he died before the house was completed in the mid-1990s. "The idea was that since it was on the shore of Tel Aviv, which in those days was quite neglected, you could be an exhibitionist and expose yourself playfully in front of the sea," Harel says, pointing out that every room in each of the seven apartments has a sea view.