This project comprises a five-star, 250-key hotel and 31 branded condominiums set across a rocky bluff at the edge of the sea. A 75- foot wall of limestone separates the property from the water across a vehicular boulevard. The entire sea edge is a water-carved landscape that reveals the city's geology in the limestone strata.
The temperate seaside climate supports significant outdoor activity; the Beirut Hotel and Residences explores this environment through the architecture of a beach-less resort on the water's edge that nonetheless participates in a lifestyle of leisure and sun. A 3-meter "collar" of outdoor space rings every hotel and residential floor outside the glazed weather enclosure of the dwelling units. This space is envisioned as a series of private beach cabanas that visually connect to the water. The cabanas are sheathed in a lattice of wood slats under which oversized curtained daybeds sit on a rough ground of sandfaced cast-in-place concrete.
The outer layer of the cabanas is the visual image of the building; here, a complex system of sliding, perforated cast-metal panels filter the strong sunlight and afford privacy to the cabana occupants when desired. The entire façade is sheathed in this semi-transparent skin, which throughout the day is transformed by the occupants' act of opening and closing each private cabana.
The hotel and residences' maintenance program wipes the façade clean twice daily by closing the panels, during late-morning and early-evening room servicing, recording and re-writing the daily cycle of occupancy. Built atop the limestone strata, the dwelling units are stacked vertically in a way that heightens the distinction between layers of individual residences, without imposing an artificial alignment that visually absorbs the program into a single Euclidian form.
