“Today, ecological tourism and by extension ecological architecture have become one of the clearest ways we register our presence in the world. Rock-cut architecture in particular has the rare ability to let wilderness take precedence, reducing the built environment to a secondary role. It suggests a shift in values. We may still desire comfort and even luxury, but not at the cost of the terrain that sustains it. A more attentive way of living with the land.
Blink and you might miss it. A flash of glass between stone. A thin line of warm light tracing a roof edge at night. The house does not present itself as an object to be admired. It remains partially concealed, almost withheld as though it were always meant to be there. Spanning approximately 1,600 square metres and taking three years to construct, this home is helping to usher in a starkly modernist design vernacular to Lebanon and its architect Samir Hakim agrees, explaining that “architecture and interior design are at their best when they dissolve into one language; space, detail and atmosphere speaking as one.”
