The project is located on a corner plot bordering with Beirut river, a green belt along the river is part of its view and landscape. This part of Hazmieh district has attracted several well-known companies to build their headquarters, transforming the area into a business district at close proximity to the center. The plot’s location and exposure contribute significantly to the architecture and landscape design, creating a landmark for the overall area.
 
The brief required five office buildings, each building is the headquarters of one company, three of them are the captive tenants and the two others are future tenants. Each of the three captive tenants has his own identity while the identities of two future tenants remain neutral with the ability to attract new identities.
 
The challenge was to create an envelope that adapts to each tenant’s identity and still unifies them all to create one Business park. In addition to that, the skin responds to the different characteristics of the site: sun and wind direction, the dynamic road movement along its outer edges, the proximity to neighboring plots on the inner boundaries, and relation of the five buildings with each-other. The skin contributes to the brutalism of the massing using fair faced concrete horizontal running fins as a unifying element in addition to the glass horizontal fins adapting in color to each of the different identities of the tenants.
 
The proposed massing is a family of five monolith creating together a central courtyard representing the void that joins them together. Each volume is translated in plan into a pure rectangle with the two broken corners. The positioning of each of the volumes dictates the breaks in its corners to adapt to its neighboring volumes. These breaks contribute to the differentiation between the volumes and create interesting corridor views towards the center of the project. The typology of the five volumes is identical, with the core oriented towards the courtyard and located in the central span of each of the volumes, along with an atrium that enhances the visual communication between the four floors of each of the volumes. The structure is designed to allow maximum flexibility allowing free floor plates with offices enjoying different views to the city and the central courtyard. Working on a rigorous grid of 1.2m, floor plates can be easily exploited as a full one-office scheme, or broken down into smaller offices. The technical spaces on the roof are packed on the internal periphery, leaving the remaining space as landscaped roof terraces designed around the atriums.
 
The landscape design on the entrance squares, plot boundaries, the central courtyard, the five atriums and roof terraces, in addition to the planters that are integrated in the skin, will altogether play a big role in answering to the several design challenges of the project.   
 

architecture: nabil gholam architects
3D images: nabil gholam architects