Levantine Modernism: The Garden Mansions in Haifa, 1936–45

This article focuses on the design and construction of one apartment project in Haifa, Palestine, and presents a revisionist microhistory of architectural modernism in the Levant. Constructed in fits and starts from 1936 to 1945, the Garden Mansions were designed by Beiruti engineer and architect Antoine Tabet (1907–64), and commissioned by Haifa business magnate and landowner Raja Salim Rais (1893–1983). The Mansions’ construction and design demonstrate how architecture fits in with circulating design ideas, construction knowledge, and building materials. Merging microhistorical archival research and spatial and design analysis, we argue that the Mansions’ architecture expresses the cultural, material, and sociopolitical sophistication that defined the Levant in the interwar period (1918–39), leading us to call it Levantine modernism. The article contributes to a growing body of scholarship on global architectural modernism through an intensive analysis of a unique case study. In layout, design, and decoration, the Garden Mansions promoted a unique vision of ‘the good life’, furnishing its urban professional tenants with the luxuries of upmarket life in the city. Set within a shifting regional and transnational economy and self-conscious cosmopolitanism, this article contributes a pluralized historiographical account of architectural modernism in the Levant and beyond.