Supreme Court of Israel

This guide to Israel's Supreme Court building in Jerusalem follows two siblings, architects Ada Karmi-Melamede and Ram Karmi, who beat out one hundred eighty firms in a 1986 competition to design it, soon after Ada left a denied-tenure post at Columbia. It traces their very different inspirations, hers drawn from a justice's writings, his from the Bible, and the project's funding as a gift from philanthropist Dorothy de Rothschild. Construction took years to complete, and Rothschild toured the empty site in 1988, before she died.