BERNARD KHOURY. IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE ENG

B E R N A R D

K H O U R Y

I N ORDE R OF AP PEARAN CE

Shared culture creates experience

Bernard Khoury. In order of appearance When the first images of Bernard Khoury’s works began to appear in architectural magazines here at the beginning of the 1990s, I remember the powerful feeling of estrangement created by the contrast between the ruins of a city that had just emerged from a devastating war and Khoury’s small, “cutting-edge” buildings. Precise in their metalwork and attention to detail, they revealed a meticulous approach and, above all, a concept that went beyond the designed object.

The B018, Yabani and Centrale immediately remained embedded in your memory like a proverbial thorn in the flesh, because they eschewed every single one of the visual and linguistic schools that were all the rage in that period. These went from tired imitations of Postmodernism to Deconstructivism, born from the international ambition of those who would become the “new masters” of contemporary architecture. The images of these clubs and restaurants were charged, unexpectedly, with a lucid madness that I later discovered sprang from many different sources, ranging from a kind of hidden, disappointed sadness for a bygone era (that of pre-war Beirut) to the cult of mechanical precision, nurtured by the best Middle-Eastern and North-American schools and honed with Lebbeus Woods. These paradoxical and pleasurable nightspots were like anomalous fragments in an imploded landscape, while at the same time revealing research that differed from what we were seeing on the international scene and, as we discovered later, the combination of an original talent and an exceptional context.

Beirut is the perfect place, the paradoxical lens through which to interpret the metamorphosis of a profession that has probably reached the end of an important period in its trajectory – which has lasted for almost five hundred years – and now finds itself in the throes of a major change whose boundaries and characteristics have not yet been defined. Beirut represents the end of the illusions of a generation who believed that the city would be rebuilt by the public institutions and according to a new collective vision. Instead, it soon became evident that everything would be done through the private sector, with its financial resources and often ill-defined aims, producing a city composed of solitary blocks which do not interact or contribute to creating a Curators

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unitary image. Bernard Khoury began to swim in this new sea despite himself, and in the following years he even developed an emotional and cultural approach marked by disenchantment but also excitement on discovering a different world to explore by relying solely on his lucidity and talent, accompanied on each venture by a handful of actors from this world in the making.

Each description of a project – especially the 10% that were actually built out of a total of 150 designed by the architect – becomes the story of an encounter with a place beleaguered by power, politics and the subtle strain of violence in this country’s blood. It also features various navigators, at times powerful pirates, at others brilliant professionals or entrepreneurs who seem to move in this world with great cynical familiarity. Even after Khoury had survived his destiny of creating nightclubs and was asked to design residential buildings and banks – the two most stable and symbolically reassuring types of architecture – the works that took shape between Beirut and the surrounding territory are marked by a contradictory double register. The precision of the machine and the technical details, and a high degree of flexibility stemming from the desires of whoever has bought an apartment and whose choices decide the final look of the work that Khoury partly leaves to its own fate. In these works the fatalism of someone who is aware that in this age of hyper-capitalism money wins, coexists with the cruel lucidity of the inventor of Faustian machines capable of weathering the storm underway. I see in this attitude a powerful and disenchanted contemporary Romanticism that believes in the power of the sublime while at the same time fighting, armed with the necessary ironical silence, to ensure that each work is the product of an aware and generous concept. This tension is particularly evident in the long series of experimental and conceptual works that the Lebanese architect has produced in the last twenty years, grasping the slightest opportunity to be gleaned from a paradoxical request or an institutional commission. And so our bizarre modern hero can just continue walking over the heap of ruins and garbage that the contemporary city has become, knowing that the disenchanted and enamoured lightness of his world will save him from going under every time.

Bernard Khoury, Luca Molinari in collaboration with Alessandro Benetti, Danielle Makhoul Thanks to Federica Rasenti DigitalMind +39 041 5951792 Corriere della Sera

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SPAZIO FMG PER L’ARCHITETTURA is the gallery Iris Ceramica and FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti dedicate to architecture and interior design.

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Local Heroes are not superheroes.

They are the valiant mercenaries who protect my grounds.

I searched for them here and everywhere; from the cities of the collapsing Arab nations to those where the cathedrals were white.

Those bitter territories are the marvelous and playful grounds on which I construct my optimism, the last enclaves where meaningful convalescences are still possible.

Local Heroes are rooted in very specific political grounds.

They are not the protected citizens of any comfortable nation.

They own the streets that others walk through cautiously.

They do not belong to any familiar place.

Their places escape all consensual definitions of territory.

They do not fit in the undisputed and often simplified histories of their time.

They are the proud romantics who fearlessly resist the cynicism of the wise.

The stories I tell do not frame any protagonist, any situation or any architectural act in any sort of tangible or immutable definitions. I am not interested in such definitions as much as I am not interested in the theoretical postures that produce them.

In my worlds of uncontrolled dissonance, I build alliances. Those are often contradictory ones. My heroes are not all cut from the same cloth.

As my stories unfold, I remain in the hope that I will not be afflicted with the censure of unscrupulous fraudulence.

- Bernard Khoury

1

Above B018 The Quarantine Beirut, Lebanon, 1998 Photo by Jon Shard Copyright Š DW5 Bernard Khoury

2

“My career in the entertainment business started after having dropped out of school at a young age. Son of a crooner, I turned to music myself and became the drummer of “The Wrong Approach”, a band whose members were students of the architecture department of the American University of Beirut.

”

- The Entertainer

“Bachir Gemayel was elected president on the 23rd of August 1982. At that moment, I envisioned a transition from my militiaman status, to my integration into the institutional political scene alongside the newly-elected president. Three weeks later, on the 14th of September 1982, Bachir Gemayel was assassinated, along with 26 others, when a bomb exploded in the Beirut headquarters of the Phalange. The end of Bachir Gemayel’s life marked the beginning of the downfall of my political and military career.

”

- The Broker

3

Above Solidere West Marina Beirut Central District, Lebanon, 2005 Copyright Š DW5 Bernard Khoury

4

“On February 14

2005, I was assassinated, along with 22 others, when explosives equivalent to approximately 1,800 kilograms of TNT were detonated as my motorcade drove by the St. George Hotel in Beirut. My killing led to massive political change in Lebanon, including the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

The investigation into my assassination is still ongoing. th

�

- The Prime Minister

5

Above N.B.K. Residence Beirut, Lebanon, 2014 Copyright Š DW5 Bernard Khoury

6

“My company, Loft Construction, currently worth over $250 million, develops and builds residential projects, all of which have been designed by the same architect.

�

- The Young Entrepreneur

7

Above Plot #450 Beirut, Lebanon, 2014 Copyright Š DW5 Bernard Khoury

8

“Our meetings were irregular both in time and in nature. I would often appear unannounced and with a questionable entourage and then disappear for months, but not without leaving a plastic bag to keep the project going.

My last memory of him was him watching me talk nervously on a payphone for over ten minutes under the scorching sun, in the middle of nowhere where I had my driver stop. When I walked back, I dropped him back to his office and drove off without a trace.

�

- The Man Overseas

9

Facing The Corporate Mogul’s Residence Barouk, Lebanon, 2008 Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

10

“Recently, my brother and I have been involved in a lengthy court battle over the division of assets associated with the company. The case recently took a nasty turn, when my brother sued me and my son for hacking into his email and reading about his personal affairs. Hundreds of these emails were posted online, comprising information on his personal finances, legal affairs and even his pharmacy bills.

They seem to believe that this in fact did occur, and the case has now moved to the Kuwaiti court system.

�

- The Corporate Mogul

Above Plot #7950 Faqra, Lebanon, 2010 Photo by Ieva Saudargaite Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

12

“Bank of Beirut was founded in 1963 under a different name. 30 years later, I took over the 5-branch bank as Chairman and CEO when it was acquired by a group of bankers and businessmen.

Today, Bank of Beirut operates 90 branches across 4 continents that include over 60 branches in Lebanon.

In 2014, it was recognized as the “Fastest Growing Bank in Lebanon” by Banker Middle East.

”

- The Banker

13

Above Plot PJTRH00 Dubai Palm, UAE, 2013 Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

14

“My numerous car rides in Kuwait with Khoury remain my most prominent memories of him. During those rides, I often drew his attention to buildings I had designed as we drove past them, the majority of which belonged to my beginnings and first attempts at modern architecture in the 1960s. Although most of these buildings have now lost their shimmer, they remain more meaningful than the more recent achievements of my mega-practice, which now relies on so-called international consultants for the design of our high-profile commissions.

�

- The Man with the Bow Tie

15

Above The Long Way Hub Sebha, Libya, 2010 Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

16

“I was sentenced to death in July 2015 by a court in Tripoli in a widely criticized trial conducted in absentia. I was placed in custody of the de facto independent authorities of Zintan. In July 2016, reports surfaced that I had been released, but the claim has still not been verified and nobody seems to be sure of my whereabouts at the moment.

�

- The Son of the Dictator

17

“Some 1,800 people, including 67 curators, attended the opening, at a time when Lebanon was recovering from the Prime Minister’s assassination. A year later, Israel was bombing Beirut and the gallery website was updated with the statement: “Lebanon is at war. The gallery is temporarily closed”. The gallery survived and reopened two weeks after the cease-fire was declared.

”

- The Gallerist

Facing SS/DW 2006 Copyright © Sfeir Semler Gallery

19

“I had a few solo exhibitions in Italy, but my painting career ended in New York in the late ‘80s following an unsuccessful exhibition of my work right next door to Jeff Koons who was displaying his stainless steel Rabbit.

”

- The Curator

Facing BeMA Beirut, Lebanon, 2016 Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

21

“In June 2009, after a row over who should go first at a traffic light, shots were fired by my bodyguards at the car of the Druze leader’s stepson in the bustling street of Ain Mreisseh.

”

- The Son of the President

Facing Plot #1072 Beirut, Lebanon, 2013 Photo by Ieva Saudargaite Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

23

“The sad episode of my unfortunate kidnapping is anything but a glorious tale.

The story took place in Beirut in the mid 70’s. I was arrested in the vicinity of the port’s 5th basin, blindfolded and taken to what was initially intended to be an unknown destination.

My time in captivity wasn’t all that bad. The food was ok, the whisky was alright, the coke was exceptional and I even managed to make a few bucks over the endless poker games I played with my abductors who were in fact very much addicted to the game.

”

- Tony Texas, aka. Antoine Batal

Facing POW Beirut, Lebanon, 1976 Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

25

Above Beirut 450 Bar Beirut, Lebanon, 2004 Copyright Š DW5 Bernard Khoury

26

“In 2002, I took a position of co-manager of the CBGB club on 315 Bowery, one of the most iconic punk rock venues; and that was just the beginning. I met and hung out with Peter Gatien in 2002, dubbed the King of New York Clubs. He was deported to his native Canada for previous charges before we could partner up on a new entertainment venue together.

I was eventually offered a job by the Ballinger Brothers as a booker at Webster Hall. In the months that followed my agreement with the Ballinger Brothers, I booked many performances that featured upcoming talents such as Arcade Fire. That was how they were introduced to David Bowie who never missed any of my events.

�

- Alex Williams

27

Above Solidere West Marina Beirut Central District, Lebanon, 2005 Copyright Š DW5 Bernard Khoury

28

“I find it very ironic that Hariri lost his life on that particular site, in an unresolved space that had no clear status, an ambiguous place that was lost somewhere between the public and the private interests.

�

- Adham Kanj

29

Above Surramanraa Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2005 Copyright © DW5 Bernard Khoury

30

“The strange love and hate relationship we had ended on February 19th 1996, the day our divorce was pronounced. That night, after months of quarrels and arguments, she paid me a visit in Riyadh. In the silence of my immense palace our last face to face ended inexplicably in torrid sex that lasted the whole night. The next morning, we both signed the divorce papers, which granted her over one hundred million Dollars. That day, she became one of the richest women on the planet. In return, she had just given me a night of unforgettable pleasure as well as the custody of our 5 kids.

�

- Al Tharik

31

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