Caught between vernacular architecture and Modernism, the 1930s Art Deco building boom in Beirut was short lived. However, its ability to embody – and shape – the layered and complex context it emerged from is unique. Art Deco holds together, in built form, the contradictions that would later disintegrate the young nation and that continue to threaten its cohesion.

Using six “lenses” to read the multilayered history of one particular building, WORKac constructed a series of approaches towards its preservation and reconceptualization, radically intensifying its characteristics and celebrating its contradictions. Typology traces the evolution from rural Lebanese houses to the urban “stacked villa.” Style demonstrates the building’s collage of high and low, east and west, concrete and steel, old and new. Envelope mirrors the thickened veranda layer of the old building to inspire the new. Program returns its use as an extended family’s urban villa. Environment filters the relationship between inside and outside – air, light, sound and smells – throughout the day. Real Estate registers the most powerful force shaping the city and its effect on scale and individuality.

Staging this approach to preservation against the narratives of identity and religion which drove the reconstruction of downtown Beirut, we point to architecture’s power to hold together the lived complexities that seed new histories and construct alternate possibilities for the future.