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Building in Haifa, (1909-1913), in this style. The proposals of Boris Chachkes, Yehoshua Salant, Y. Borot and Y. Shamivich also include eclectic decorative elements in the spirit of the east. Even if the guideline was to plan a modern structure, then the participants in the competition offered a wide variety of stylistic options.
Although Prof. Berwald mocked and commented that with "the large number of competitors, hardly any professional architects in Palestine did not participate, not only indicates the importance of the goal, but also unfortunately proves that there is unemployment in this field."9 However, the widespread participation in the competition for building the National Institutions, led to the announcement of many competitions in the Land of Israel in the Thirties. For instance, all the Cooperative Residences in Tel Aviv were built as a result of architectural competitions. Arieh Sharon – then a young and inexperienced architect, who returned to the Land of Israel in the early Thirties from his studies in the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany – participated in and won them all. In Cooperative Residences Aleph, Bet and Gimmel, he won jointly with Dov Kutchinsky and in Cooperative Residences Zayin, he won jointly with Israel Dicker – both of whom participated in the competition for the National Institutions Building.10
After the competition to build the National Institutions, an exhibition of all the competition's participants took place in 1928 in Jerusalem and it was borrowed for an exhibit of the Association of Architects and Engineers in Haifa for a week. The building was included in the magazine L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, which was dedicated to architecture in the Land of Israel in 1937 and a model of the building was presented in the Eretz-Yisraeli Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
The National Institutions Building was built in stages, for budgetary reasons. At first, they aspired to build the entire structure at once. In the discussion that preceded the construction, the question arose whether this would lower the cost of building. Ratner replied that the difference would be insignificant, "although as far as he was concerned, his gain would be greater if it were built all at once." Regarding the question of whether it is possible and desirable to order the construction materials even before construction began, he recommended to begin preparing the stones needed for construction. The stone for the KKL-JNF building was quarried in Jerusalem at the "Selah" quarry near Mekor Chaim. Due to the slow cash flow, they were forced to settle for constructing the KKL-JNF Wing first. The participants of the meetings toyed with the thought that "they could build the KKL-JNF building by the Muharram" (the traditional date for renewing lease
9 Shabtai Zechariah. Collection of Articles on the Rehavia Neighborhood in Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Guarding Jerusalem, 5749, pp. 10
10 Contrary to what was noted by David Kroyanker in his book Architects in Jerusalem, and following Amnon Ramon and the Wikipedia entry for "National Institutions Building" – I believe that Arieh Sharon did not participate in the competition for the erection of the National Institutions Building. I found no evidence for his participation and as far as I know he was still in the beginning of his studies in Bauhaus Dessau. The Architectural Department, headed by the architect Hans Mayer, was only founded there in 1927.
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