Brave New Concrete World

By Esther Zandberg April 22, 2011

Crossposted from Haaretz

I experienced my own great architectural revolution in 1955, when my family moved from a rural area in the heart of the Sharon to an apartment block in a Histadrut labor federation cooperative housing project, on the outskirts of Givatayim. The moment we unpacked our bags on the gravel — which later became a blossoming garden — an entirely different world opened up to me.

This revolution encompassed all aspects of my life. My relationship with other people and with the environment changed beyond recognition, as did my perspective on the world, which looked entirely different from the third floor. Everything was new, primeval, traumatic and yet promising.

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