Building Plan

The Academy is excited to announce the selection of the firm MKR (Mayslits Kassif Roytman) Architects as the winner in the nationwide competition to design the Academy’s new global center (the Minve) in the National Quarter of Jerusalem.

The competition was held in collaboration with the Israel Architects and Urban Planners Association and was open to all Israeli architects. The competition generated widespread interest, and 100 proposals were submitted. The panel of judges reviewed the anonymized submissions and selected five design proposals from the initial 100 to advance to the next stage. This narrowed pool ultimately yielded the winning proposal.
The Academy’s aims of harmonizing with the environment and maximizing accessibility to the public guided the competition. The winning design captures the Academy’s intent: it effectively encourages personal connections and interactions through its inviting and open structure; and the building is aesthetically pleasing from the various external perspectives and blends nicely with the natural environment. The design also fits in well with the development plans of the National Quarter and Museum Boulevard and with the lively activity expected in this area in the future.

The first runners-up, tied for second place, were the designs by Michael Peled and Daniel Strassburger and by A. Lerman Architects in collaboration with Daniel Finkelstein and Elvira Turek. The two designs that tied for second runner-up were submitted by Lakstein-Margalit Architects and by architects Ram Kaplan and Nir Ovadya.