Prof. Alexander Baerwald was a Jewish-German architect and painter, one of the founders of the Faculty of Architecture at the Technion. Baerwald was one of the pioneers of the new Israeli architecture during the Yishuv period and one of the most influential on the formation of the eclectic style in Israel. Along with the Herzliya Gymnasium, which was destroyed, the building is one of the two most important buildings built in the Eretz Israeli style, which was one of the early incarnations of the eclectic style in the Land of Israel.