In September 1973 Husayn Amanat of Iran was chosen as the architect for the Seat of The Universal House of Justice, a mighty edifice to be erected at the zenith of the arc. In February 1974 his design was accepted and with all speed the process of construction was set afoot, beginning with a massive excavation of the mountain face and proceeding rapidly, but with precision and attention to every detail, in order to erect a monumental building for the centuries. In its message of 5 June 1975 to the followers of Baha’u’llah throughout the world the Universal House of Justice emphasized the timeliness of the work:
“The first of the majestic edifices constituting this mighty Centre, was the building for the International Archives of the Faith which was completed in the summer of 1957 as one of the last major achievements of Shoghi Effendi’s Guardianship and which set the style for the remaining structures which, as described by him, were to be raised in the course of time in the form of a far-flung arc on the slope of Mount Carmel. In the eighteen years since that achievement, the community of the Most Great Name has grown rapidly in size and influence; from twenty-six National Spiritual Assemblies to one hundred and nineteen, from some one thousand to seventeen thousand Local Spiritual Assemblies, and from four thousand five hundred localities to over seventy thousand, accompanied by a corresponding increase in the volume of the work carried on at the World Centre of the Faith and in the complexity of its institutions. It is now both necessary and possible to initiate construction of a building that will not only serve the practical needs of a steadily consolidating administrative centre but will, for centuries to come, stand as a visible expression of the majesty of the divinely ordained institutions of the Administrative Order of Baha’u’llah.” (The Baha’i World, vol. xvi, pp. 397-8)
Classical in its exterior and in harmony with the Inter-national Baha’i Archives, the exterior of the building is graced by a colonnade of fifty-eight pillars; its marble skin is chosen to resist the weathering of a millennium; its interior is simple, open, and adaptable to the evolving functions of a long future in service to the Faith. Memorable for pilgrims are the magnificent concourse in which they meet the Universal House of Justice and the splendid library-banquet room. How fitting the building’s commanding position high on Carmel’s slope, yet still in the shadow of the jewel-like Shrine of the Bab. (David Ruhe, Door of Hope, pp. 173-175)