architecture
5 stories on this theme.
The Man With the Stick and the Notebook
On a quiet mountain slope full of pine trees, one man walked back and forth for years, imagining a great curving path and beautiful buildings that did not exist yet.
The Architect Who Was Family
When it was time to build a beautiful crown over the Shrine of the Báb, Shoghi Effendi turned to a famous architect who happened to be his own father-in-law.
Designing the Arc on Mount Carmel
In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum recounts how Shoghi Effendi, walking the slope of Mount Carmel year after year, conceived and laid out the great Arc of buildings — the International Archives, the Universal House of Justice site, the Centre for the Study of the Texts, the Teaching Centre — on which the world administrative institutions of the Faith would in time stand.
He Asked His Father-in-Law to Design It: The Shrine of the Báb
Rúḥíyyih Khánum's *The Priceless Pearl* recounts how, in 1942, Shoghi Effendi asked his own father-in-law — the celebrated Canadian architect William Sutherland Maxwell, then resident in Haifa — to design the arcade and superstructure of the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel. The colonnade of Baveno granite and the Chiampo arches were the answer.
Thousands of Mashriqu'l-Adhkárs: 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Dedication Talk
At the dedication of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár grounds in Wilmette on May 1, 1912 — the same gathering at which Nettie Tobin's stone was laid as the cornerstone — 'Abdu'l-Bahá spoke about the future Houses of Worship that would arise across the world, and gave the specific architectural instruction that the building must be *circular,* never triangular.