Arthur Goldreich

Goldreich was born in Johannesburg in 1929 and came to Israel from South Africa at the age of 19.[2] He served in Machal, the overseas volunteers who participated in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, and fought as a member of the Palmach.[1][2] Afterward, he joined Kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch, where his work included measuring water for Mekorot.[2]

He sailed to Israel in 1948 aboard the Fabio, a vessel designed for 50 people that had been converted to carry 292.[1] Its passengers included displaced persons and Holocaust survivors, together with about 30 South African Machal volunteers.[1] Nine passengers were pregnant, and two gave birth during the voyage.[1]

Around 1950, Goldreich and Abe Abramowitz produced what was described as “probably the first ergonomically designed chair.”[1] He subsequently returned to South Africa to study architecture and later completed a degree in industrial design in London.[2] In London he met Tamar de Shalit, who became his wife and a collaborator in his design work.[2] In 1954, he won South Africa’s Best Young Painter Award.[1]

In 1961, Goldreich and lawyer Harold Wolpe acquired Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia to serve as a headquarters for the underground movement against apartheid.[1] Goldreich had become an early member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress’s military wing.[1] Mandela stayed at the farm while posing as a gardener and occasional driver, and later wrote that he turned to Goldreich because his combat experience in Israel made him one of the few members of the movement’s early guerrilla force with such experience.[1]

Goldreich’s artistic work also intersected with South African public life: he designed the sets for the 1959 jazz opera King Kong, a production that challenged the apartheid regime.[3] His activities thus included both work in the arts and participation in the anti-apartheid underground.[1][3]

Security police raided Liliesleaf on July 11, 1963.[1] Nineteen people were arrested and charged with sabotage, including Goldreich and four other white Jewish men; Wolpe was arrested later.[1] Goldreich and Wolpe escaped before trial and fled to Swaziland disguised as priests.[1] Police and prosecutors regarded Goldreich as “the arch-conspirator.”[1]

After escaping South Africa, Goldreich made his home in Israel and, for several years, headed a small anti-apartheid movement there.[4] Such anti-apartheid activities in Israel were narrow in scope, and no substantial debate developed around their guiding principles during the period covered by the 1983 study.[4]

At Bezalel, director Dan Hoffner invited Goldreich to teach a basic-design course in the interior-design department.[2] After one year, Goldreich became head of the department, which later became the Department of Environmental and Industrial Design.[2] He also founded Bezalel Academy’s architecture department.[1]

In a 1969 article, Goldreich set out an approach to design instruction that emphasized rational decision-making and design methodology.[2] He included communication and expression techniques, basic science, analytical thinking, and students’ ability to explain their ideas in words among the aims of design education.[2] His teaching also treated people and their surroundings, rather than individual projects alone, as subjects of design study.[3] He organized field trips to refugee camps and to historic cities altered by war, including Jaffa and Jerusalem’s Old City.[3]

Goldreich worked as an interior designer, often collaborating with Tamar de Shalit and designer Dora Gad.[2] His work encompassed stage design for the Khan Theatre and Haifa Theatre, including the first production of Hanoch Levin’s Shitz.[2] Other examples included a rug and wall hanging for the Coral Lounge at the Tel Aviv Hilton in 1965, and stage and costume design for Noah at Jerusalem’s Theatre of the Circle in 1968.[3] His and de Shalit’s broader practice extended across architecture, interiors, product and graphic design, stage sets, and costumes, with projects involving kibbutz buildings, memorials, and the Carmel Forest Spa.[3]

Beyond Israel, Goldreich served as a visiting professor at a school of architecture in India and as vice-president of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Designers.[2] He continued painting as well; his last exhibition was held about two years before his death at the Bezalel Art Gallery in Tel Aviv.[2]

After retiring from teaching, Goldreich established a foundation to support art and architecture projects and chaired the Arthur Goldreich Foundation for the Promotion of Art, Design and Architecture at Bezalel.[1][2] Its support helped publish architecture books including The Israeli Project, edited by Zvi Efrat; Shimon Shapira: Making Architecture, edited by Alex Ward; and Yaacov Rechter – Architect, edited by Osnat Rechter.[2] Bezalel awarded him its Yakir Bezalel honor in 2006.[2]

In December 2001, Goldreich attended a reunion of Rivonia trialists at which the Liliesleaf Trust was announced, with the aim of restoring the farm’s house and outbuildings as a museum.[1] His experiences also formed part of an oral-history interview associated with The Jews of South Africa.[5]

Goldreich and Tamar moved to the Beth Protea retirement home in Herzliya in June 2009; she died that September.[1] Goldreich died on May 25, 2011, aged 82.[1]

The professional archive of Goldreich and de Shalit began to be transferred to the Israel Architecture Archive in 2012.[6] Drawings and sketches found in a drawer in Goldreich’s studio, some marked “secret,” documented the temporary courtroom designed for the Eichmann trial.[6] The courtroom design was the work of Nahum Maron and de Shalit, rather than Goldreich.[6]

Goldreich’s opposition to apartheid brought him into conflict with Israel’s engagement with South Africa.[7] A retrospective in the Jewish Review of Books recounts that, during South African prime minister John Vorster’s first visit to Israel in 1976, Goldreich pasted posters on Jerusalem telephone poles juxtaposing Vorster’s name with swastikas.[7] In that account, a Holocaust survivor confronted him, spat on a poster, and defended agreements made to protect Jews and secure Israel’s future, leaving Goldreich speechless.[7] The anecdote presents a clash between Goldreich’s anti-apartheid protest and an argument for prioritizing Jewish security in Israel’s foreign relations.[7]

Sources also differ over Goldreich’s formal architectural credentials. A 2018 account noted that an exhibition text described one year of study at the Technion and further study in Johannesburg without identifying where he received formal accreditation; the exhibition’s curator nevertheless maintained that Goldreich was an architect with a master’s degree from London.[3] The 2011 obituary instead stated that he studied architecture in South Africa and completed a degree in industrial design in London.[2]