Modulofts, Sheikh Nahyan Center for Arabic Studies & Intercultural Dialogue (CASID) and H2 A Frames Projects, presented at SHARE Cyprus 2025 by Fouad Samara Architects, Lebanon
Fouad Samara founded Fouad Samara Architects in Beirut in 1997 with the aim of contributing to the cultural renaissance the vibrant city of Beirut was witnessing after the end of the civil war. The practice aims to produce an indigenous architecture that is derived from and is relevant to its cultural, social, physical, and economic context; and applies a stringent process to develop an architecture of integrity that seeks a unique architectural solution for each and every project void of any stylistic or branding preoccupation. Fouad teaches at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts in Beirut, and has taught at the Lebanese American University, and the American University of Beirut. He has participated in crits in Lebanon and the UK, and was speaker at the A + P Smithson Symposium: Ideas, Impact, Architecture at the University of Bath (November 2017), and at the New Forms of Nature conference at the University of Genova (April 2022).
On April 9th, 2025, at SHARE Cyprus 2025, Fouad Samara will present three of their notable projects: Modulofts, Sheikh Nahyan Center for Arabic Studies & Intercultural Dialogue (CASID) and H2 A-Frames.
Project #1: Modulofts
Start year: 02.02.2017
Today’s urban context is chaotic and contradictory; reinforcing architects’ role in producing catalysts of change. The commercial residential sector of Beirut’s architecture has specifically become an uncontrollable mushrooming of mostly banal and uninspiring buildings which do not contribute to or reflect the continuously evolving rich and vibrant city of Beirut, its architectural heritage, and the discerning taste and lifestyle of its contemporary citizen. Modulofts aims to challenge these existing structures by creating a new typology that reflects Beirut’s rich urban living and responds to its rapidly changing and evolving requirements. In its brutal honesty, Modulofts aims at achieving a precise authenticity in architecture equivalent to what was accustomed to in architecture of past eras – traditional or indigenous architecture. Presumably, this is what Le Corbusier was referring to in “Vers Une Architecture” (1929) where he yearned for not ‘another’ or ‘new’ architecture, but for architecture as it had always been, and always ought to be – a relevant, ordered, and coherent architecture: a ‘modern’ architecture. Inspired by the purity of the traditional Lebanese house – the ‘beit’, and the poetics and flexibility of urban lofts in London and Manhattan in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Modulofts is a 14 story building made up of 7 duplex lofts atop a piloti, on a single aspect squarish 206 sm site, located in eastern Beirut’s Rmeil area near the gentrifying Achrafieh district.
Project #2: Sheikh Nahyan Center for Arabic Studies & Intercultural Dialogue (CASID)
Start year: 10.09.2017
A recent addition to the University of Balamand Campus grounds, CASID is located on a gently sloping site with an unobstructed view of a walnut grove, the campus in the foreground, and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. The project evolved from the concept of dialogue. Dialogue with its immediate site, architectural heritage, and wider cultural context of Al Koura and Lebanon. The building aims to engage faculty, students and visitors alike, be a non-authoritarian accessible platform for cultural and intellectual exchange, and offer a progressive image of Arabs to the world.
Project #3: H2 A Frames
Nestled into the edge of an Oak forest in Bikfaya, overlooking Lebanon’s coast and Mediterranean Sea below, two relatively large A Frames disrupt the existing terrain as little as possible; each rising above it on six slanted steel columns that vary in length depending on the terrain below.Each A Frame consists of a kit of parts, prefabricated and assembled on site, with that process celebrated in the tectonics of the architecture itself.
About SHARE Cyprus 2025 Forum
The 5th edition of the Forum SHARE will take place on the 9th of April 2025, in Nicosia and will showcase an outstanding lineup of speakers. This event is organised by SHARE Architects, the leading networking platform for architects in Central and South Eastern Europe, in partnership with the Cyprus Architects Association (CAA) and the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK).
Registrations are available on https://share-architects.com/share-cyprus-2025-forum/
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