Archinect - News

Architect Amale Andraos debuts first-ever jewelry collection for Judith Ripka

2022-12-19T19:00:00-05:00

“The challenge was adjusting to the scale,” Andraos said. “When I first started sketching, the pieces were much bigger. I remember the reaction — the team was very excited about the ideas but I wasn’t computing the budget,” adding that the process of design is “always the same across scales, but this experience was very different because the scale of jewelry and the way it relates to the body is so precise.”

Andraos, who stepped down as Dean of Columbia's GSAPP last May, told WWD that her inspiration to make jewelry for the first time came from her hometown of Beirut’s Art Deco tradition. Other architects like Elena Manferdini and Rossana Hu have contributed designs for the Judith Ripka brand. Pieces from Andraos’ new Ayah Collection retail for between $550 and $1,995. The WORKac co-founder will now rejoin the faculty in Morningside Heights in September after a yearlong sabbatical.

Related Feature Interview on Archinect: Deans List: Amale Andraos of Columbia University's GSAPP

“If you look at Amale’s body of work, she is known for asymmetry. Most people prefer symmetry in jewelry so it was an interesting challenge for us to wrap our heads around Amale’s aesthetic and make it work in jewelry,” CEO and GSAPP alumnus Robert D’Loren of Xcel Brands, Ripka’s parent company, added. “There are several finishes on the metal work, from shiny to matte which creates this remarkable sense of balance...

Beirut port explosion survivors are pushing to have the remaining silos preserved as a memorial site

2022-02-24T13:45:00-05:00

Last August, Swiss engineering firm Amann Engineering GmbH concluded that the iconic grain silos are at risk of collapsing as they slowly tilt. The Lebanese government, notably Economy Minister Amin Salam who is in charge of the silos, has echoed similar sentiments, which has angered the families of the devastating blast’s victims.

The structure was comprised of 42 individual reinforced concrete cylindrical silos and is credited with preventing the blast radius from further impacting the heavily-populated western portion of the city, which could have killed into the thousands. The remaining portion has since become a de facto memory site to those lost in the blast (and its survivors) similar to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial that was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

Back in May, Beirut issued an international call for proposals for a port renewal competition that includes the silo site. Many Lebanese citizens have responded favorably to the restoration of the silos in support of victims’ families who have become fed up with the controversial judicial investigation into the blast’s root causes. The struggle has drawn parallels to the failure to hold certain parties accountable after its devastating Civi...

A global competition to redesign the Port of Beirut has been announced

2021-05-20T14:12:00-04:00

The Beirut municipality and the Inspireli Awards have announced a competition calling on architecture students from around the world to submit entries for a new Port of Beirut, following the devastating 2020 explosion that completely destroyed the port and the adjacent part of the city.

The aim of the competition is to offer humanitarian aid to Beirut through the unique designs and innovations of students’ submissions. The subject of this massive renewal project will be implemented in the curriculum of many universities around the world throughout the upcoming winter and spring semesters, with a final submission date in February 2022.

Photo: Inspireli

The new Port of Beirut will be rebuilt and financed by Lebanon’s Finance, Design, Built, Operate, and Transfer Department (F.D.B.O.T). The Port administration and the Ministry of Public Work and Transportation are currently setting their requirements and conditions list, which will shape the approach of the entries and, subsequently, ...

Fire breaks out in Zaha Hadid-designed Beirut building

2020-09-15T14:04:00-04:00

A fire has broken out in a downtown Beirut building near the city's port where an explosion last month killed nearly 200 people, wounded thousands and left the city's residents traumatised. It was not immediately clear what caused the fire in one of the city's best-known buildings that was the work of the late Iraq-born British architect, Zaha Hadid.

The ZHA-designed commercial building was reportedly still under construction, and one corner appears to be badly damaged from the fire, according to first news reports. Welding is rumored to be the cause of the fire. No injuries have been reported so far.

This story is still developing.

UPDATE 9/15, 11:10 AM: The Head of the Civil Defense Service and Operations Division, George Abou Moussa, told the National News Agency that the building fire was now under control.

Good morning - in today's news from #Lebanon, a huge fire erupted in the Beirut souks, in one of Zaha Hadid's signature design buildings. pic.twitter.com/Ahs1pIc0bf
— Luna Safwan - لونا صفوان (@LunaSafwan) September 15, 2020

French-Lebanese architect Jean-Marc Bonfils among casualties in deadly Beirut blast

2020-08-11T14:43:00-04:00

Jean-Marc Bonfils, a noted French-Lebanese architect who helped lead the reconstruction of Beirut's war-torn downtown after the country's civil war, died August 4th, 2020 following the massive ammonium nitrate-fueled explosion that rocked the city and caused widespread damage.

Bonfils was among at least 158 casualties resulting from the blast, which has displaced over 300,000 people and prompted the country's prime minister to resign.

Bonfils, whose father was also a prominent architect, was born in 1963 and earned degrees from the Paris-Villemin School of Architecture, the École du Louvre, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. His early career took root with some of the most daring French architects of the 1980s and 1990s, including Christian de Portzamparc, Alain Sarfati, Architecture Studio, ARTE-Jean Marie Charpentier, and Maurice Bonfils architectes.

In 1995, Bonfils and his father selected to lead the reconstruction of downtown Beirut, a content...

An empty Beirut skyscraper now transformed by an artist's colorful installation

2018-06-07T14:51:00-04:00

Lebanese artist Jad El Khoury has long been creating interventions in Beirut’s urban landscape to draw attention to these symbolic sites of warfare [...] Khoury has now taken on the imposing Murr Tower for a two-month installation: ‘The Burj El Murr soars from Beirut’s skyline, filled with scars, constantly provoking the city’s residents, whose past is shadowed by war, and present is spent dealing with those harsh memories.’

Artist Jad El Khoury's temporary installation Burj El Hawa (Tower of Air) inhabits a 34-story skyscraper in Beirut, known as Murr Tower or the Beirut Trader Center. Using brightly colored curtains found in a typical Beirut home, Khoury transforms this empty building which was used as a snipers hideout in the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

View of the blinds © Jad El Khoury

A towering presence in the city, the skyscraper now projects the artist's message of hope and vitality to the community rather than one of war and unresolved conflict.

View of Burj El Murr overlooking Beirut © Jad El Khoury

Khoury's installation Burj El Hawa will remain in the skyscraper until July 2018.

Morphosis Architects' U.S. Beirut Embassy should be finished by 2023

2017-01-24T13:39:00-05:00

After winning the competition to design the U.S. Embassy in Beirut several years ago, Morphosis Architects has had some additional good news from the State Department: a construction contract has officially been awarded for the project, which sets the timetable for completion a little over six years from now. As the official word from the unmolested Department of State website notes:

"The Department of State awarded the construction contract for the new U.S. Embassy complex in Beirut, Lebanon to B.L. Harbert of Birmingham, Alabama.

The multi-building complex will be situated on a 43-acre site in Awkar, near the current U.S. Embassy Compound. The new complex will include a Chancery, a Marine Security Guard Residence, representational and staff housing, facilities for the community and associated support facilities. The project is expected to be ready for occupancy in 2023."

BeMA: a new art museum for Beirut

2016-10-14T13:08:00-04:00

Beirut is to get a new modern art museum with a design inspired by Italian campaniles and Arabic minarets. BeMA, the Beirut Museum of Art, will feature a slender tower rising 124 metres into the sky, according to designs by the winner of an architectural competition revealed on Thursday.

An international jury has selected the Paris-based Lebanese architect Hala Wardé to oversee the complex on what the project backers describe as “a symbolically charged site that once marked the dividing lines in the Lebanese civil war”.

For more from Lebanon and the greater MENA region:

The Gadgetist: Bernard Khoury on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #22

2016-05-09T15:32:00-04:00

In the late 1980s, Bernard Khoury came to the US from Lebanon to study architecture at RISD and Harvard, then returned to establish his practice in Beirut in the mid-1990s. His father was a prominent modernist architect during Beirut’s booming pre-civil war years, and much of Khoury’s work somehow engages with Lebanon’s post-war urbanity. We spoke about his time at Harvard, studying “war architecture” with Lebbeus Woods, and how his practice is a constant reevaluation of how architecture can reflect upon, and come to terms with, the traumas of war.

Listen to One-to-One #22 with Bernard Khoury:

iTunes: Click here to listen and subscribe to the new "Archinect Sessions One-to-One" podcast
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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

B018, the subterranean night club Khoury designed in Beirut

Evolving Scars by Bernard Khoury and Lebbeus Woods

Drive-By Shooting...

A real Phoenician

2015-12-30T00:44:00-05:00

The architect David Adjaye had designed a $100 million building with a facade of red ceramic tiles, combining a high-end mall and a separate exhibition space...Some art critics said displaying the collection in a wing of a mall eroded the line between art and commerce.

Rachel Donadio reports from the grand opening of the Aishti Foundation, a private museum in Beirut, designed by the architect David Adjaye.

Earlier Christopher Perrodin had questioned why the project wasn't "on anyone's radar?? We see a fusion of commercial and culture within one project...may not be THE way forward, but I feel it is definitely a unique way of bringing a broader public into proximity to high culture".

Photographer captures the beauty of Beirut's architecture

2015-11-25T15:36:00-05:00

Many in the west too often think of Beirut as a city scarred by war and terror. But the capital of Lebanon is a beautiful, modern city, one utterly remade after the country’s civil war ended in 1990. Gleaming skyscrapers tower over historic and pre-war modernist architecture, drenched in color and bathed in sunlight. It provides no end of inspiration for Serge Najjar, whose gorgeous photos of the city fill his Instagram.

Private money attracts big-name architects to design new museums in Beirut

2015-10-09T15:01:00-04:00

A raft of museums, most backed by private money, are springing up in what is, for many, an unlikely cultural hub: Beirut, the capital of Lebanon [...] The design competition launched on 1 October; the architect Zaha Hadid is on the jury along with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones of London's Serpentine Galleries. Salamé, who founded the Aïshti fashion chain, invested $100m in funding a contemporary art museum, designed by the British architect David Adjaye, in Jal El Dib [...].

Oliver Wainwright takes a closer look at Beirut's downtown redevelopment

2015-01-22T15:43:00-05:00

Two decades after civil war blew the Lebanese capital to rubble, the city centre boasts immaculately rebuilt streets lined with Gucci and Prada stores – but the whole place is strangely deserted [...] the resulting place feels less souk than Duty Free airport lounge. It is a monotonous world of more swanky high street brands, from Burberry to Tag Heuer, staffed by idle shop assistants awaiting the promised customer footfall that has yet to arrive.

From Beirut: Open Letter to Mr. Rem Koolhaas

2014-12-16T11:11:00-05:00

In light of the above, we are appealing to you in your roles as founder and lead architect of the firm, and as an educator and a public intellectual, to side by us in advocating to your client, but also to planning and urban authorities in Beirut the preservation of a site with unique characteristics, and withdraw services on this project. If such advocacy efforts falter, we urge you to dissociate yourself and your firm from this contentious project.

We have recently learned that the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has been commissioned to develop a design for a projected development on a prime sea-front location in Beirut (Lebanon): the Dalieh of Raoucheh. Proposing a private development over such a prime social, national, archeological and geological landmark in Lebanon has generated an ongoing public outcry, in the form of protests, letters to officials,discussions, and media mobilization. We are writing today to alert you to the disturbing facts behind the project, and solicit your support in outlining an alternative vision for Beirut’s seafront.

New kid on the block: SOMA's mixed-use Bobo in Beirut begins foundation work

2014-12-10T14:09:00-05:00

The distinctive BOBO building by New York-based SOMA Architects will be the new kid on the block in Beirut's Mar Mikhael district. The design SOMA came up with for the residential building, which recently began foundation work, consists of a steel exoskeleton tied to a concrete core that will cantilever over an existing house that is located at the end of a row of structures dating back to the 1920s.

BOBO's developer, Zardman, was not allowed to demolish the house's façade. To work around this condition, the house was gutted and excavated six floors underground. Once built, BOBO will have a total of 11 stories, 13 residences (including a penthouse duplex), and retail on ground level.

More images in the gallery below.

NIMBYs go to court over "modern" home; Zaha gets an apology; global warming rages on: News Round-Up for August 25, 2014

2014-09-02T20:07:00-04:00

Friday, August 29:

MIT's MindRider helmet draws mental maps as you bike: The prototype is currently being used to create a mental-map and guidebook for NYC, and an upcoming Kickstarter campaign will attempt to fund the project for commercial sale.
In Beirut, a grassroots push for more grass: Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war made much of Beirut's green space inaccessible or dysfunctional. The Beirut Green Project is trying to bring at least a modicum of green space back to the city's residents.

Thursday, August 28:

Norwegian artists plan to open art academy in North Korea: Nothing's final yet, but the school is committed to its disbelief in sanctions or boycotts on art.
Alvar Aalto gets a close look from Google's Cultural Institute: Google's cameras go inside the famous Finnish architects studio, as well as a selection of his works, for a curated photo-exhibition.

Wednesday, August 27:

China considering drastic ban on coal: Chinese news outlets claim that work is underway to ban coal in Bei...

In Beirut, a grassroots push for more grass

2014-08-29T13:22:00-04:00

On a breezy summer afternoon here in the newly renovated Sanayeh Garden, children are climbing the monkey bars, pedaling on bikes and kicking a ball by the huge water fountain in the park’s center. [...] While this would be an ordinary scene in Paris, New York or Singapore, it’s practically a new invention for today’s residents of Beirut. Functional public parks have been virtually nonexistent here for decades.

Morphosis Architects selected to design new U.S. Embassy in Beirut

2013-10-31T17:35:00-04:00

From six finalists to three and finally to one, Morphosis Architects will be designing the new U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, as announced by The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) earlier this week. Morphosis won against top-name contenders Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Mack Scogin Merrill Elam / AECOM. All top three teams advanced to the competition's final round of presentations and interviews. Submitting designs weren't a requirement.

Previously: Shortlist for new U.S. Embassy in Beirut now down to three finalists

Shortlist for new U.S. Embassy in Beirut now down to three finalists

2013-09-04T21:46:00-04:00

The Stage 2 shortlist for the new U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon has now been narrowed down even further.

As the Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) reports, these three design teams were selected for Stage 3 evaluation:

Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Mack Scogin Merrill Elam / AECOM
Morphosis Architects

Earlier this year in June, the Stage 1 shortlist still included Rafael Viñoly Architects, Steven Holl Architects, and Yazdani Studio.

Previously: DS+R, Morphosis, Viñoly and Holl Among Finalists for new U.S. Embassy in Beirut

UPDATE: Morphosis Architects selected to design new U.S. Embassy in Beirut

DS+R, Morphosis, Viñoly and Holl Among Finalists for new U.S. Embassy in Beirut

2013-06-19T13:28:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) has shortlisted six design teams for the new U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

The shortlisted teams are:

Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Mack Scogin Merrill Elam/AECOM
Morphosis Architects
Rafael Viñoly Architects
Steven Holl Architects
Yazdani Studio

UPDATE: Shortlist for new U.S. Embassy in Beirut now down to three finalists

UPDATE 2: Morphosis Architects selected to design new U.S. Embassy in Beirut

District//S by Allies and Morrison Architects Wins at National Urban Design Awards

2013-02-07T17:02:00-05:00

The residential development District//S in Beirut, Lebanon has been awarded the Francis Tibbalds Prize for best Practice Project at the UK's National Urban Design Awards 2013. The prize was presented to the designers of the project, London-based Allies and Morrison Architects, at a ceremony held last night at London’s Royal Overseas League.