ARTS & WORKS CENTER

An Award Winning Competition Entry, The Art & work center, located in Tripoli, Lebanon, has a program very similar to the 
one of Khans which were providing individual spaces for traveling merchants within a shared structure that was providing security.


Instead of a single mass, in order to open the “arms” of the building to the public, the building has a deconstructed massing. A very large venue space (theater, concerts, exhibitions, etc) is created by the flexibility of rotating panels composing the elevation of the buildings towards the central courtyard. We proposed to nest the crowd in the Liwan, between the two wings of the building, under a tensile roof, between sound proofing rotating panels. These would create an improvised theater, or a completely undisturbed courtyard.

Between the slabs, would be fixed, from inside, wood panels, all based on the same solid wood frame. These would include fully glazed, opaque, or louvered panels. As such, the aesthetic language would be similar to a an under-construction building, giving off an approachable impression.