« Beirut is a permanent archeology. Buried 7 times through the ages, the city tells the story of our ancestors. Currently, its built landscape reflects its recent history. Ruined buildings invaded by wilderness, juxtaposed with red-tile-roofed traditional houses that still bear witness to the architecture of this Mediterranean city.
Located in the port area, “Stone Garden” emerges with a new architectural form that translates a sensitive spatial reading of the city. Taking its roots from its context, it portrays the capacity of architecture to act as a healing tool and as an active player in building resilience at times of crisis. Transforming tumultuous events into a creative opportunity, the tower appears as a sculpture drawn at an urban scale. Amorphous, it communicates the form generated by urban regulations. Its openings of various sizes hold the memory of the city, and offer multiple framings of the sea from the inside.
Inhabited by trees and gardens, windows invite nature to climb up to the sky of Beirut. The variety of their sizes individualize each residential floor, generating new forms of communal spaces. The project appears in the city as an earthly emergence; its skin is custom-made. It is entirely labored and crafted by the hands of many workers fleeing neighboring wars. The building’s skin is combed through a process that is the result of incremental experimentation. It invites artisans to participate in the emotional realm of architecture, transforming architecture into a curing tool that brings people together. Today, the tower rises as a living archeology, a host of life, memory, and nature. It houses living spaces as well as the Mina Image Centres, an art platform dedicated to image, photography, debates, and reflections on the Middle East. »
– Lina Ghotmeh, architect
Inhabited by trees and gardens, windows invite nature to climb up to the sky of Beirut. The variety of their sizes individualize each residential floor, generating new forms of communal spaces. The project appears in the city as an earthly emergence; its skin is custom-made. It is entirely labored and crafted by the hands of many workers fleeing neighboring wars. The building’s skin is combed through a process that is the result of incremental experimentation. It invites artisans to participate in the emotional realm of architecture, transforming architecture into a curing tool that brings people together. Today, the tower rises as a living archeology, a host of life, memory, and nature. It houses living spaces as well as the Mina Image Centres, an art platform dedicated to image, photography, debates, and reflections on the Middle East. »
– Lina Ghotmeh, architect
