This project comprises a five-star, 250-key hotel and 31 branded condominiums set across a rocky bluff at the edge of the sea. A 75- foot wall of limestone separates the property from the water across a vehicular boulevard. The entire sea edge is a water-carved landscape that reveals the city146;s geology in the limestone strata.
The temperate seaside climate supports significant outdoor activity; the Beirut Hotel and Residences explores this environment through the architecture of a beach-less resort on the water146;s edge that nonetheless participates in a lifestyle of leisure and sun. A 3-meter 147;collar148; of outdoor space rings every hotel and residential floor outside the glazed weather enclosure of the dwelling units. This space is envisioned as a series of private beach cabanas that visually connect to the water. The cabanas are sheathed in a lattice of wood slats, under which oversized curtained daybeds sit on a rough ground of sand-faced cast-in-place concrete.
The outer layer of the cabanas is the visual image of the building; here, a complex system of sliding, perforated cast-metal panels filter the strong sunlight and afford privacy to the cabana occupants when desired. The entire faccedil;ade is sheathed in this semi-transparent skin, which throughout the day is transformed by the occupants146; act of opening and closing each private cabana. The hotel and residences146; maintenance program wipes the faccedil;ade clean twice daily by closing the panels, during late-morning and early-evening room servicing, recording and re-writing the daily cycle of occupancy.
Built atop the limestone strata, the dwelling units are stacked vertically in a way that heightens the distinction between layers of individual residences, without imposing an artificial alignment that visually absorbs the program into a single Euclidian form.