What if the cities we are designing today are not actually the futuristic utopias for the modern word, but rather the fragile materialistic fridges of our future dystopias? Today we are showcasing Eli Keller’s graphically stunning architectural exploration through collage into the creation of a Dystopia.  Eli Keller sees Tel Aviv as the perfect storm where this lively urban culture is slowly losing its own identity; a victim of the modern world.  You can see this in modern throughout the world, where the buildings and cities we live in have lost their sense of place.  The glass screens on our phones and the glitter of modern buildings have forced us into a blasé attitude towards the world, blinding us to the loss of our cultural identities. Check it out after the jump!

STUDENT: Eli Keller
SCHOOL: Ariel University School of Architecture
PROFESSORS: Beni. R. Levy, Itzhak El-Hadif, Dana Oberson,
Yehuda Mendelson, Sa’adia Mandel
COURSE: 5th Year – BA
YEAR: 2013

Dystopia: Tel Aviv, Isreal

“The work presented here is a culmination of the 5th year bachelor of architecture graduation project. It is a vision of dystopia presented in graphic collages and conceptual models of a future world gone. The work is partly not contextual and therefore it is more representational in nature, and somewhat abstract. However, the greater part of the creation was dedicated to the city of Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv is the peak of Israeli urban culture and city planning, but it also symbolizes its decadence. It is vibrant, it is planned to perfection, its alive 24/7 and its slowly but surely, getting lost. Vehicles and parking lots dominate its streets. The fake glittering light reflecting of the shiny towers popping anywhere and everywhere blinds its inhabitants. Its people are gazing at the black screens in their homes, offices and pockets and are not aware of their own surroundings.

The work deals with iconic places in Tel Aviv, symbolising all architectural, financial and cultural achievements of the past, and sins of the present. From huge city square defined by roads, through high riser shopping malls and transportation terminals, and through a boulevard, which stretches from west to north, holding some of the city highest and lowest historical landmarks.

The main site for this dystopia is Rothschild Boulevard. Through its theater at one edge, the trees and luxurious apartment at its core and the office and residential towers climbing over or destroying historic buildings, The boulevard is representational to everything that is good and bad in our modern urban culture. Through the re-imagination of it, in its ruins and re-ruins, there is a chance of a new outlook on architecture and our role as architects, in a world growing slowly but surely inhabitable.”

– Eli Keller

FUTURES+ Original Post