The Zgharta residence is located on Tallet El Khazen in Zgharta, North Lebanon, among a landscape of olive groves and agrarian hills.

it is accessed by a road that borders its western limit, which also overlooks pastoral vistas. 

The house is organized around a courtyard with one floor denivelation between living and sleeping zones. 

A sequence of architectural elements ( the bedrooms outer wall, the bedrooms volume, the living room's roof overhang..) reinterprets the horizontal geography of the context, creating privacy from the adjacency of the road. 

From the depth of the living room, the residence opens up to the distant hills and extends naturally to its courtyard. 

The space between the sleeping volume and outer wall is used to extend the space of the bathrooms outward, to a serie of intimate courtyards.

Enclosure, massing and orientation of the house integrate ecological concepts of passive cooling, cross ventilation, rainwater harvesting, wastewater treatment and reuse for irrigation. 

The northern stone wall plays the role of a thermal mass while the southern wall is  a good thermal insulator. Glazed elevations secure daylight and cross ventilation – needed during the hot season - for all spaces while the overhanged roof  protects the interior from the high unwanted sun, letting the low sun in during the cold season.