A hundred times damaged, a hundred times rebuilt, Beirut is the eternal site of a relentless pursuit of repair. A 1935 building on Arz street in Saifi is one more witness to the French mandate and manifold eras to follow, generations pass and architecture remains… A ground floor surmounted by three floors above house apartments with a central hall plan already in transition, no elevator for the time, suspended small balconies and plethora of cement tiles in varying patterns and earthy colors. On the roof, already at this level, panoramic views towards the Mediterranean, Beirut Central District and Saifi generously open up.
Remnants of art deco on the facades or in the wrought iron of the balustrades evoke Guimard or Bruno Taut at the beginning of the 20th century. Their ideas of skeletal entry to the subway in Paris or glass pavilion in Cologne are still potent a hundred years later? Indeed, no place here for nostalgia, and of course no place for gestural futurism. The law allows for a near doubling of the building height and exploitation, and this challenge creates a new volumetric that now asks for a novel architecture.
A series of belvederes, like ethereal terraces superimpose each other atop the 1935 structure to create an ode to transparency, in gold glass, transparent or fluted glass, golden expanded metal. And in a homage to the natural heritage, to plant layers of suspended gardens in jasmine, white roses, pennisetum, olive trees or mini citruses. Traces of gold start to the appear in the old, like surgical insertions of metal, to mend or to repair. The windows become fully transparent, allowing for better views of the city from the hotel rooms but also better peeks into the rooms from the buildings nearby. Traces of white appear in the addition, like evanescent traces of the old in the new. But the gold reappears as well in the new, in the shape of the floating canopies or of steel columns, all the way to the final pergola on the rooftop, mostly invaded by wisteria.
Like a golden crystal that transpierced the building top to bottom, the project conceptualizes a new glamorous sparkle for a renewed Beirut lifestyle, an architectural kintsugi to help us turn one more page of repair, and celebrating every moment.
Project Status: Unbuilt.
Designed by Karim Nader with Soumer Al-Kamand, Samer Aouad, Lama Rafeh, Adrian Ebert, Alaa Chaar.
Structural Engineering by Elie Turk
MEP Engineering by Bureau Elias Abou Khaled
Legal Studies by Joseph Menassa
Photography by Marwan Harmouche.