The project is a multistory urban building in Khandaq El Ghamiq, an unknown neighborhood that has gained a negative reputation for its thugs invading and destroying Beirut downtown during the latest social unrests.
The purpose is to create a grounding effect by visiting the site, talking to the locals, and breaking barriers in search for identity. By doing so, students have discovered the Lebanese hospitality and space sharing experiences, a co-living concept at its best in their own country, reinventing along the way the existing spaces into a new co-living experience; they managed the needs of the newly assigned users in coordination with the existing environment, adapting it to local lifestyle and needs.
The design challenge is to highlight spaces, volumes, voids and masses and solve circulation issues pertaining to the function vs. privacy requirements of each space within the 5 floors building: a new unified space under the same concept, given an identity through mood boards, new materials, and new interpretations.