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Powerful Structure

Spectacular 3-storey house in Beirut

Beirut is in the throes of a building boom, much commented upon, loved and hated in equal measure. Lebanese architect Bernard Khoury trained in the United States before returning home, hoping to participate in the rebuilding of embattled and ruined Beirut, much destroyed during the 15 year civil war. He says Beirut was the most interesting laboratory in the world when reconstruction began. Khoury and his wife Nathalie and 2 children live in a detached, 3-storey house on top of a building he designed for a developer with whom he had designed an earlier residential building (among many other projects from nightclubs to a library for the Venice Bi-ennale) The house is spectacular. Khoury describes it as 'framing a view to catastrophic urban Beirut, an in-your-face scene which unusually is facing away from the Mediterranean. The double-height living room glass wall slides away and a glass balustrade is all that protects the space from a 9-floor drop. The site below is protected by a 3 Cemeteries, the French Embassy and Lycee and other institutions so is quite unique as almost every plot is being used up. He has a love of wood and steel, his grandfather and father a carpenter and furniture designer/architect and he likes to work with artisans who are not part of the conventional building trade. The living room storage units are highly crafted and on wheels, Khoury designed the dining table and used a master plasterer to make the black oval ceiling unit which houses air cooling, a gesture to ornate plaster work of the past being re-invented. His wife chose the remaining furniture adding a feminine touch to a powerful structure.