S-Project

Localización: Broumana, Líbano (2009)
Arquitectos: Youssef Tohme (http://www.yousseftohme.com/)
Fotografías: Joe Keserouani
Enlaces / Links: architecturelab

El proyecto consiste en la extensión de una vivienda particular en Broumana, Líbano. El cliente es un personaje rico y complejo, y se ha tratado de recrear un escenario de los diferentes momentos de su vida fragmentando los diferentes usos a través de varias piezas dispersas en la parcela.
Se ha añadido una nueva recepción, una zona de baño (sauna, jacuzzi y gimnasio), un espacio para proyección de cine, y un área destinada a los más pequeños de la casa (las cabañas).

We work under a special circumstance for this Project: a house extension for a private lot in the suburban Beirut, where nature tends to disappear. The client being a wealthy and a complex person, we chose to reveal a scenario of his life instances through different functions inserted separately within this natural site. It is an interesting game with the existing landscape.

Album completo de imágenes / Picasa album

TEXTO COMPLETO / FULL TEXT

El proyecto consiste en la extensión de una vivienda particular en Broumana, Líbano. Se trata de una zona cercana a Beirut con vistas a la costa, devastada por la construcción, en la que la naturaleza tiene tendencia a desaparecer. En este contexto, se ha tratado de preservar el paisaje, un bosque de pinos, una rareza en un país que sufre una deforestación masiva. En este proyecto se ha intentado que el paisaje tenga más fuerza que la propia casa. El cliente es un personaje rico y complejo, y se ha tratado de recrear un escenario de los diferentes momentos de su vida fragmentando los diferentes usos a través de varias piezas dispersas en la parcela.
Se ha añadido una nueva recepción, una zona de baño (sauna, jacuzzi y gimnasio), un espacio para proyección de cine, y un área destinada a los más pequeños de la casa (las cabañas).
Éstas últimas parecen flotar sobre la alfombra natural de hierba. Levantadas sobre finos pilares de acero, están realizadas con una transparente piel de policarbonato que permite a la luz infiltrarse y crear intrigantes juegos de sombras que asombran a niños y adultos con sus irreales efectos.
La pureza y la desnudez de los diferentes espacios contribuyen a crear un ambiente tranquilo y sereno en el que la naturaleza adquiere un gran protagonismo.

We work under a special circumstance for this Project: a house extension for a private lot in the suburban Beirut, where nature tends to disappear. These Mountains’ sides overlooking Beirut coast ravaged by hazardous construction during war. Within this context, we mainly look for the preservation of the existing landscape, a pine forest passing through the lot, reclaiming itself as a rare land within the massive deforestation activities in Lebanon. Here the landscape is stronger than the house. The client being a wealthy and a complex person, we chose to reveal a scenario of his life instances through different functions inserted separately within this natural site. It is an interesting game with the existing landscape. The project take birth between the existing tree truncs, it imprints their shape, their shadows… The forms are pure; the space is nude. We search a calm and serene mood. This house creates an innovative architectural agenda through reviving a huge area unused for decades by inserting several functions: Children Cabanas, Cinema Space, A Jacuzzi and relaxation space, a sanitary block… We took the project as a global reflexion of the overall space while including the idea of duality as a primordial condition of space design: Confrontation along with a dialogue between architecture, humans & nature. So instead of proposing a conventional architecture, we chose to leave the forest as is with its powerful identity and inserting within its specific natural instances functions that empower its presence.
This conceptual intervention articulated several functions dispersed within the forest. An existing structure is carved out and redesigned.
Far from the Cinema space under the trees we perceive rooms ‘Children’s cabanas’ like white flowers laid on a natural background standing on thin & robust steel columns waiting for the immediate natural context to appropriate them. The cabanas are floating on green natural carpet. The polycarbonate skin, the transparent ceiling infiltrates light creating a play of shadows intriguing children and adults with their unreal spatial effect.
The Jacuzzi, An elongated wall along the trees, we conceived a space of relaxation and contemplation…the branches invite themselves inside the structure and the limits between interior and exterior disappear completely marriage between architecture and nature takes place while each one keeps its own strength. A real intimate place between nature and humans extends suddenly without prior notice. We lose the sense of direction experiencing a succession of metal volumes, glass and fiber glass, black glass mosaics…