Renovation

Renovation

Villa Lyla is a private estate that explores proportion, layered forms, and a grounded relationship to its landscape within a tropical setting. The home presents a peaceful retreat on the canal water's edge, balancing formal rigour with a relaxed, climate-conscious approach to living.

Each Philippe Starck-designed villa begins with a grounded base formed in stone to give weight to the lower levels and establish a tactile connection to the earth. Above, the architect designs lighter structures, where glass and slender framing open the interiors toward the horizon.

The fix, he told me, was temporary - he didn't have the right part and couldn't get it. This experience revealed a broader shift in how modern products are designed, sold, and owned - one that increasingly treats repair as optional and replacement as inevitable.

"It has been estimated that one million five hundred thousand houses each year for a period of 10 years will be needed to relieve the urgent housing problem of this country. The enormity of such a need cannot even be partially satisfied by building techniques as we have known and used them in the past."

E-1027 is one of the most perfect examples of modernist architecture, with its hyper-functional design and nonexistent ornamentation, minimalist yet thoughtful and deeply attuned to its environment.

"We're in a unique spot here because we are really attached to the silhouette. We really don't want to change the outside, which is a challenging engineering function when you say no, the package is fixed," says Joseph Snyder, a system architect at KitchenAid.

The project emphasizes the reactivation of spatial value within existing community structures, transforming building stock into community assets of public significance.

The project reimagines the structure through circular thinking, ecological strategies, and new construction technologies, embracing reuse as a model for sustainable urban development.

Set within the dense fabric of a bustling urban neighbourhood and constrained by a modest 4,000 sq. ft. plot, Jali House reimagines the potential of urban residential architecture.

The term 'orangery' was introduced in 17th century Europe when a craze for citrus fruits swept the continent's nobility class, and many built lavish, light-filled buildings devoted to their cultivation.

The inaugural edition is organized around the central theme "Shifting the Center: From Fragility to Resilience," reclaiming African architecture's place as a site of spatial intelligence and cultural memory.

The design team combined the requirements for an accessible bridge and a small pavilion into a single structure, creating a unified architectural gesture that supports both movement and gathering.

In the nineteenth century, entire railway networks became obsolete almost overnight, not due to physical deterioration, but because of changes in the technical standards that supported them. The expansion of railroads across Europe and North America adopted different track gauges, and as a dominant standard gradually emerged, these infrastructures became incompatible with one another.

Growing up in a small village in Lebanon taught me resilience and adaptability. Those qualities have influenced my character and my approach to design and decision-making.