Architecture & the Environment

The studio tackled the subject of Biosphere reserves, looking specifically at the area of Jabal Moussa in the Keserwan region. Biospheres were understood as protected zones featuring natural and cultural heritage, while incorporating approaches to support adjacent communities and people. The studio considered biosphere reserves as valuable zones that help enable regional development and thus proposed, through architectural interventions in the buffer areas around the reserve, viable housing strategies that reshape the possibilities for sustainable domesticity. The idea was to propose new models for living and working, close to these natural zones, and away from the polluted urban areas, allowing inhabitants to escape from the mundanity of suburban housing into a communal living that reconnects them back to nature.

Third year core studio at the American University of Beirut - co-taught with Sandra Frem and Nicolas Fayad