The position and location of the lot at the southern edge of Beirut’s central district determined to a great extent the architectural approach we developed for the project.

Beginning from the over pass, up to the east most point, and up to the Murr Tower to the west end, the whole stretch has a very particular urban reading.

The general reading of the street imposes the image of low rise independent, standalone buildings, featuring colored plaster and paint finishes, identifying an alternating mass/void pattern to the street.

This feeling is doubled by the 50m wide void which separates Solidere zone from the opposite section of Beirut; an effect that is doubled by the fact that it has been turned to a green edge.

The green aspect of the zone is complemented by several gardens within the Solidere section: beginning with the Mashnouk standalone private residence, the private park of the Mouawad residence, ending with the planned garden by Murrr tower on the shoulder of the Wadi Abou Jamil hill.

This yields a built envelope that is broken down rather than a mass with long facades. Another significant feature to the neighboring buildings is the stressed expression of the windows, and a rather low percentage of voids to solids ratio.

We planned our intervention based on those characteristics: a 24 m building, almost completely separated from all its perimeter boundary as a geometry, expressed as a continuous skin wrapping around the offices space, with a 35 percent voids to solids ratio via the scattering of two sizes of windows, with three main gardens carved out to make smaller the exterior volume expression, the building is finished with ETICS, a system of paint applied onto thermal insulation fixed outside the volume, hence creating great insulation and reducing to a great extent the exposure to heat gain from the south orientation and the west and east exposures as well.

The carved out gardens are open to sky and serve to introduce greenery into the built mass. Other cuts and stretches applied to the resulting volumes serve to connect the project visually to its immediate surroundings. The lowered terrace to the north west is aligned with the new building there, while the south west volume is stretched out 3,5 m to the roof to strongly demarcate the corner and street intersection.

The project is the result of simple and efficient observation and interpretation of the exit sign context.