In Conversation with Anastasia Elrouss

Through her NGO Warchée, a Lebanese woman wants to reinvent the future

Can one woman change the world? Based in Lebanon but setting her sights on the globe, Anastasia Elrouss is certainly willing to give it a try. In November 2017, the 35-year-old architect created Warchée, a Lebanese NGO that aims to achieve gender equality in the engineering, architecture and construction fields. “Even in Europe and the United States,” she says, “equality may be present in the law, but it’s not in the workplace. Women feel they’re required to act like men, and they even worry about having children.”

Elrouss is well placed to determine the status of women in her chosen field. In addition to Lebanon, where she was born and still lives, she’s worked extensively as an architect in Europe, the United States and beyond, and virtually everywhere she’s practiced her trade, she’s faced obstacles and roadblocks simply because of her sex. When she shows up at construction sites for example, whether in Lebanon or elsewhere, people are always puzzled, expecting to see a man but instead having to deal with a brown-haired young woman.

“I’m the third of a family made up of seven women,” Elrouss says. “I’ve lived all my life without a male figure. Psychologically, people force you to have a male reference, and I always tried to rebel against this.” But the absence of a male presence also served to embolden Elrouss. She grew up believing she could do whatever she wanted, and thus chose to become an architect. “Through architecture, I felt I could really express myself and leave a physical trace,” she says.

Immediately after earning her architecture degree from the American University of Beirut in 2005, she started working at Samir Khairallah & Partners in Lebanon. In 2007 she moved to Paris to work for Jean Nouvel, and in 2008 she became the head of Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates (YTAA) in Beirut, moving up in the firm to become founding partner and general manager by 2011.

But to truly make her mark as an architect and as a woman, Elrouss realized that she had to venture out on her own. In November 2017, the exact same moment she created Warchée, she exited YTAA and founded her own firm, ANA-Anastasia Elrouss Architects, with headquarters in Beirut’s Gemmayze neighborhood.

For Warchée, Elrouss is working on an official launch that’s sure to grab international headlines. She’s asked Lebanon’s “it” band Mashrou’ Leila to create a clip that addresses gender equality in the workplace. “It’s a new way of fundraising,” she says. “And Mashrou’ Leila are good messengers for Warchée.”

Through architecture, I felt I could leave a physical trace”

The newly created NGO has various goals in mind, the first of which is to tackle primary schools through education. “We want to take boys and girls to places where there is physical activity and explain to them that they can both do the job, that there’s no physical difference,” says Elrouss. Another goal is to create, initially, two safe spaces for women in Lebanon. Dubbed “La Maison de la Femme,” these places will encourage women to help each other through work: some will cook, some will babysit, others will use the facilities to work. “It’ll be a 24-hour thing,” says Elrouss. “But this isn’t a charity, and all women will have to contribute through work. They will learn to rely on themselves, to become morally, financially and culturally independent.”

Warchée’s third aim is to coach educated women to become more aware of their abilities and to understand the importance of what they do. “Women tend to be submissive culturally,” says Elrouss. “The idea is to teach educated women to be leaders, to ask for what they want so they can accomplish great things.”

After Lebanon, Elrouss hopes she can set in motion the wheels of global change. To that end she enlisted the help of French architect Michèle Laruë-Charlus, as vice president of Warchée. Laruë-Charlus, one of the stars of France’s urban planning scene, and whose impressive credentials include reinventing the city of Bordeaux’s public space, will help expand Warchée’s reach outward.

The international scope of her project saw Elrouss travel to 30 countries in 2017 to interview and film 30 women about gender quality in the workplace. “It’s a global issue,” she says, “but things are changing faster than ever, and we need to be part of this change.”

Words Marwan Naaman

Photography Marco Pinarelli