THE ARC COMPLEX

Baha‘i World Centre
Haifa, Israel - 2001

Loc­ated on Mount Car­mel and fa­cing the Medi­ter­ranean sea, this com­plex of four build­ings, hous­ing the world ad­min­is­trat­ive centre of the Baha'i Faith, is set along an arc sur­roun­ded by beau­ti­ful gar­dens. The Seat of the Uni­ver­sal House of Justice, hous­ing the most im­port­ant ad­min­is­trat­ive body, is loc­ated at the apex in the centre of the arc de­fin­ing the form­al garden ax­is point­ing to­wards Akka, the rest­ing place of Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Faith. The pro­gram re­quired that the Greek clas­sic­al style, seen as main­tain­ing its beauty throughout the ages, be used for the ex­ter­i­or of the build­ings. The in­teri­ors are de­signed in a con­tem­por­ary style with state of the art build­ing tech­no­logy. Con­struc­ted over sev­er­al dec­ades, the com­plex in­cludes of­fices, and vari­ous oth­er spaces in­clud­ing an aud­it­or­i­um, cafet­er­ia, archiv­al stor­age, con­fer­ence rooms, study lib­rar­ies, and park­ing serving over 500 staff.