This course complements the history of Israeli architecture survey, by studying the larger scale beyond the architecture of single buildings. Despite its chaotic appearance, Israel is one of the most intensively planned territories in the world. The course provides an historical survey of development of large-scale systems that constitute Israeli space: national, urban and rural planning; large scale infrastructures of production, transportation, communications, utilities, recreation, welfare and warfare; ecological systems and landscapes.

Organized thematically and chronologically, it provides both a planning history of the Israeli territory, using planning activity as a document of social and political history. It critically examines the planner and landscape designer’s mode of knowledge, power and expertise, by contextualizing it in relation to social, political, cultural and military conflicts.