Tel Aviv Municipality Rejects Building Design: Too Normal

“We will only approve architectural designs that make a normal person question his own sanity, if not actually vomit.”

Tel Aviv, January 8 – City officials nixed the proposed plans for a new residential and office tower in Israel’s financial and cultural capital today, noting that nothing about the structure offers anything bizarre, quirky, avant-garde, or just plain ugly, and therefore does not qualify for approval.

The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality rejected the plan by architectural firm Shafui-LeGamrei for a forty-story building resembling a normal skyscraper in design and function, which the property developers had intended for a site about four hundred meters southwest of the Savidor Central Train Station and the Azrieli Mall. In its rejection, the municipal review committee criticized Shafui-LeGamrei for failing to include any architectural features other than rectangular metal and glass.

“As precedent has long demonstrated,” the rejection read, “this city prides itself on unique building designs. The only ‘conventional’ designs come from a previous era, before enlightened leadership took the helm of the First Hebrew City. The White City serves as a bastion of Bauhaus architecture, and in keeping with that forward-looking school of its day, we, too, will only approve architectural designs that make a normal person question his own sanity, if not actually vomit.”

“This design,” the document continued, “files to incorporate a single element to confuse, nauseate, or offend the viewer or visitor. No irregular shapes. No pointless protrusions or metal frameworks. No weird slopes. No garish colors. No pretentious facades. Not even a sculpture evocative of a vulgar sexual act outside the main entrance. The design as submitted might suit Ashdod or Nahariya, but not Tel Aviv. Those cities can afford to be boring. It’s kind of their brand, you might say. We, however, have standards.”

A member of the committee disclosed that certain features not formally include in the proposal could have nevertheless persuaded the panel to approve it. “Unfortunately, there were no supplemental materials to guarantee that we might see, for example, a truly hideous mural commissioned for the side of the building,” she explained. “The Committee might also have been swayed by informal assurances that the property would see use as something truly distasteful, such as a museum of turds, or a replacement for Tel Aviv’s solitary strip club, now defunct. Alas, no such input was forthcoming, and we were forced to withhold approval of the proposal. The applicants are certainly encouraged to modify their ideas and resubmit at any point, taking into consideration the critiques that the Committee cited in the rejection.”

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