Beirut Observatory

Winner of the 2011 World Architecture News (WAN) Award — Unbuilt Residential category.

Located in central Beirut, adjacent to the Ring Highway connecting the eastern and western parts of the city, Beirut Observatory draws its identity from the city’s dense and irregular urban fabric. Overlooking the city centre, Martyrs’ Square and the Mediterranean coastline, the tower becomes an urban observatory.

The project responds to two seemingly conflicting demands: maximizing the potential of a constrained urban site while creating diversity and individuality among the apartments.

The building is conceived as a vertical composition of stacked glazed volumes, generating variation within a coherent whole. Cantilevered balconies and terraces reinterpret the irregularity of Beirut’s urban fabric, transforming its horizontal condition into a vertical architectural landscape.

Shading louvers protect the apartments from the strong eastern and western sun while providing privacy and supporting the possibility of a vertical green screen that unifies the façade.

Rather than relying on formal gestures for their own sake, Beirut Observatory derives its architecture from place, climate, views and the particular conditions of Beirut—offering a contemporary interpretation of the residential tower.