Building Bahij Makdisi 1

Notes

This is where Bahij Makdisi and Associates had their offices for a while on the ground floor. The base on ground level is treated with a dark cladding that establishes its distinction from the rest of the building. It performs a symbolic task. The rest of the building offers a legibility of the parts, reduced to an easily recognizable set of elements. On the south elevation, a generously perforated veil that gives a notion of depth is framed by the top, the base and the side planes generating thus a clearly identified box facing the main street. The architects carefully managed to have it look as if it was hung from the core, mainly by separating it from the columns of the ground floor. A vertical plane is the solid counterpart on the secondary street, a horizontal plane crowning the building and distinguishing the upper floor that is treated differently as a penthouse. In the entrance, the walls are clad with aluminum panels. The staircase is a contemporary remake of the open-air stairs found in buildings of the earlier period. Today the building has lost some of its elegance due to the incorporation of the freestanding circular columns into an enlargement of the ground floor.

Sources

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