‘Houses from Within’ opens Tel Aviv to the masses

Dozens of rarely seen corners of the city that never sleeps were open to the public over the weekend as the “Houses from Within” festival ran in Tel Aviv.Held for the fifth year running, the event opened to the public 51 of the most architecturally unique private houses and public buildings in the city over the course of the weekend.The event was sponsored by “Maximum Tel Aviv” and is part of a series of “Open House” festivals held in over 50 cities around the world.Tel Avivians toured some of the city’s most desirable and unique apartments, many of them belonging to famous architects and designers.The public buildings included the firehouse north of the Redding power plant at the Tel Aviv port, home to the city’s firstever fire truck “the Meira,” named after Tel Aviv’s first mayor Meir Dizengoff, and an eight-story winding concrete staircase observation tower that overlooks Sde Dov airport, the Tel Aviv port and the shoreline north to Herzliyah. Tour guides said Saturday that the Meira still runs, though it is not called on to put out fires anymore.Below the observation deck a few of the festival’s other offerings were held, including an “accessibility experience” where visitors were invited to try their hand at navigating a wheelchair and in general “try out” being one of Israel’s 1.5 million disabled people, if just for a few minutes.Further north, the event offered tours of the Redding promenade next to the power plant, a recently opened pedestrian and bike path that gives visitors a view of what was for decades a no man’s land between Tel Aviv and Herzliyah.In Ramat Aviv, the doors of the The Sarah Racine Root Research Laboratory at Tel Aviv University’s Botanical Gardens were open to the public.