The architect Erich Mendelsohn had already worked for the successful businessman and art lover Salman Schocken a number of times: in the 1920s three of the Shocken company’s largest department stores – in Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Chemnitz – were built to his designs.

In 1934 the two men met up again in Palestine. Mendelsohn, then living with his family in London, had received a commission to build a house in Rechovot near Tel Aviv for Chaim Weizmann, decades-long President of the World Zionist Organization. Schocken, who had already established himself in Jerusalem and made contacts, arranged further commissions for Mendelsohn. As a board member of the Hebrew University, he saw that the architect was tasked with planning the campus, individual faculties and the university hospital. Furthermore he was to build a villa for him and his wife Lilli, with a free-standing library building. Mendelsohn opened a second office in Jerusalem and shuttled between England and Palestine in the ensuing years until 1939 when the couple decided to make the definitive move to Jerusalem.

His clients weren’t immediately taken with his design for the villa and library: too big, too modern and too uncomfortable, particularly in the estimation of Lilli, shaken as she was by the loss of her homeland. Mendelsohn made the building smaller without deviating from his overall concept, and offered suggestions for the interior design. The lady of the house nonetheless fell back on the tried and tested, decorating each room with cyclamen.