ISBN 978-8 8-6242-47 9-0 First editio n D ecemb er 20 20 Printed in Ital y Alleli | Pro jects | 1 1 Š LetteraVenti d u e Ed i z i on i Š Karim Nader No part of thi s b ook may b e rep rod u ced or t ra n s m i t te d i n a ny fo rm o r by any mea n s, i n cl u d i n g p h otocopyin g , eve n fo r i nte r n a l o r educatio nal u se. P h otocopyi n g a b ook, p rov i d i n g t h e m e a n s to photo co py, o r fa ci l i tati n g th i s p ra cti ce by a ny m e a n s i s s i m i l a r to co mmitting th ef t a n d d a ma gi n g cu l tu re. Bo o k design: Ma rti n a Di stefa n o LetteraVentid u e Ed i z i on i S . r. l . Via Luigi Spag n a 5 0 P 96100 Siracusa , I ta l y ww w.letteraventi d u e.com
C O N T E N T S
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FO R EWO R D by M ir ja na Loz a novs ka
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Introduction: For a Novel Architecture
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I. Homes upon Nature
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II. Reprises [Beirut]
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III. Cinematic Architecture
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Conclusion: A Luminous Grey
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AF T ERWO R D by S té pha nie G ha z a l-Za ha r
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PROJECTS AND PH OTO G R APH Y CR ED I TS
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B I B LI O G R APH Y
F O R E W O R D
M ir ja n a Lozanovs ka
Perhaps a person never stops being a student. This does not mean that person is not the master of their craft or the successful professional, rather a person can remain open to the quest and endeavour, and to the work and momentum. I recently read an insight about Le Corbusier’s Voyage d’Orient, a record of his 1911 journey – eastwards – not published for fifty years after the journey but significant because it contains in it an architectural challenge that Le Corbusier believed he could not answer. Le Corbusier remained a student all his life. Karim Nader was a student when I taught architecture at the American University of Beirut; he was an exceptional student. The architectural work, reflections, and references to cinema and literature contained in this book follow that period. I have hardly had any interaction with Karim Nader in that period of 2000 – when he started practicing and teaching architecture – to 2020 – when he has collated his work and created this publication. While I can say in it is the same dedication as when he was a student, what is more accurate is that this dedication is now driven by something much more rare, courageous – a desire to create and work. He recalls words from his architectural education of more than twenty years ago, not only because he has a phenomenal memory but because words matter to him. 1
Mirjana Lozanovska (PhD Architecture) is Associate Professor at Deakin University. Her focus on the creative ways that architecture mediates human dignity and identity has influenced her teaching in architecture for thirty years. Her books include Migrant Housing: Architecture, Dwelling, Migration (2019) and EthnoArchitecture and the Politics of Migration (2016). She has published widely on Kenzo Tange’s masterplan for Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. Mirjana is co-editor of Fabrications: JSAHANZ.
This current work is an epiphany on or homage to literature, cinema and architecture. It is not a critical or theoretical elaboration of the relationship between these three disciplines, rather it is in the form and format of a narrative montage. Karim Nader is not trying to make his architecture like literature or like cinema, here there is a very different poetics. Literature and cinema are a parallel continuity in the period 2000-2020, along with the consideration, making and crafting of architecture, and it is their associative points of encounter that makes one relevant to the other. The novels and the films (and also the music) that Karim Nader refers to and muses upon are not directly linked causally or specifically to a particular architectural project but important moments that triggered a deeper endeavour – they are intimate and moving – and erupted in significant energised work. It is in this sense that I can appreciate the continuity of the text – while not a singular narrative flow or structure – its series of vignettes present a montage of engagement and focus. Intensity, relief, momentum, return – these create the rhythm and direction of the narrative. The photographs of the architectural work – built, experimental, unbuilt, proposed – neither punctuate nor reiterate the narrative text. Nor does the text explain the projects or elaborate upon the visual representation of the projects. The photographs offer a way of looking at architecture, and also returning to architecture. They are viewing devices, and as such the photographs present an understanding and guide us to see and perceive. I love the image of the school NAARCH Aarhus (Denmark) – it appears like a collage of a two-dimensional palette. It is actually an 7
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A F T E R W O R D
Stép h an ie Gh a za l-Za h a r
All the projects in this book are stories. All the stories in this book are both imaginary and real. Karim Nader is an architect, a character, a narrator, a novelist. Karim Nader is a storymaker. As you close the book, you realize you have been on a journey, a walk in which Karim takes you through his work, his inspirations and sensitivity without shying away from intimacy or what he described as his “sentimental relationship with every site, every client, in every situation.” A walk where he shows you meticulously coordinated series of images as storyscapes, then presents you with some insight before he steps back again and leaves you to jump back in. Not unlike a Robbe-Grillet character or narrator. What Karim does in laying his work in sensory and novel-like sequences is a similar kind of engagement with perception you will find in his projects, both built and on paper. From private to public experiences, each is a story and a combination of site-specific vision, program that dares to be a unique, imaginary construction, and a carefully threaded net for events to unfold, like in a novel.
Stéphanie Ghazal-Zahar has a background in architecture and film, and a passion for writing. She is a versatile character who works in project management, makes her own short films and regularly publishes architectural reviews in a Lebanese quarterly magazine. She coordinated several projects in the cultural field and implemented an educational program in a contemporary art center to make art accessible for students in public schools. Her ongoing projects include the development of a childcentered, play-based early childhood education unit. 238
When I first met Karim, I was writing a piece about KN Loft, his apartment in Kfar Habab. Since then I have followed his work closely and published articles about several of his projects, including Amchit Residence, Villa Kali, and NINETEEN84. I vividly remember this first encounter in the immersive space of KN Loft. Memories, dreams and travelogues come together in a fabric woven by emotion, inspiration and texture. The loft’s atmosphere has a rare balance of density and lightness, probably by means of that “luminous grey.” But the most intriguing element is the way the apartment is re-written, letting go of conventions to make way for new connections, in a nonlinear cinematographic montage. Conceived as two loops that each revolve around a kitchen/ toilet core with a private entrance and bedroom, the loft becomes a labyrinth for those who would have expected, for instance, the kitchen to be connected to the dining room. Instead of this predictable trail, you will explore, from space to space, a sequence of experiences. The possibilities that arise from such a shift in program make this apartment the stage for an uncommon daily life that can be reinvented and reedited, which I would here compare to Robbe-Grillet’s “L’Éden et Après,” that eventually reshuffles as “N. a pris les Dés.” Working with the unexpected as raw material, new possibilities emerge. But the sequencing, the preparation and the balanced build-up stay away from vain surprise effects. If it does surprise you, it is in a way that opens a window to an unexpected dimension. Probably best at illustrating this is the Nocturne Majlis, the plot twist in The Art of Dining event by AD Middle East in 2017. In contrast with the neighboring
dining proposals, Karim Nader created an experience outside the social frame. A soothing, secluded space where time stretches to allow for introspection. Exit the mundane, enter the intimate, like in a jump-cut. Visitors are connected to the ground, sitting on a sensual layer of carpets (which inevitably also brings to mind Freud’s divan), and presented with sensory, entrancing stimuli, from colorful spices to burning incense. A complex setup to simply connect with the inner self. And on the other side of the curtain, the euphoric outside world in effervescence. But what if staging included the architect/writer’s references, exposing his fantasies and calling for new ones? NINETEEN84 answers this peculiar question, and sets up a space to be lived, a surface for one’s own fantasies to be projected, and a stage to be looked at, in a game of seduction and desire. This is a story where function, the street, surveillance and voyeurism overlay. Users and passersby live and interact with the project from their respective stand-points, ultimately experiencing a path in their own imagination, a path that is triggered by objects, textures and images. By staging his own references, from the ad for the launch of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 to Robbe-Grillet’s “Glissements Progressifs du Plaisir,” Karim creates a framework for the imaginary to transpire. While finalizing this book Karim shared with me a personal project: he is actually writing a novel. I smiled, inevitably. And I thought: this is it, he’s taking the step, from Novel in Architecture to Architecture in a Novel. Going through the first chapters, I recognized his approach to constructing space, from floor to ceiling, with furniture, ambient details, and visual items surrounding the characters. And I recognized his love for getting in and out of the story being told, to let the narrator take part as a character and then step back, to be at once omniscient and subject to the events and their happening. And this, perhaps, is what sums-up best Karim Nader’s approach to architecture, both as designer and novelist: creating spaces for life to happen with room left open for the unexpected, with the storymaker simultaneously knowing and not knowing how it will eventually unfold.
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