Beirut City Centre

Beirut City Centre is a four-storey mall, adjacent to Damascus Road alongside the inner city highway. The site is long and narrow, resulting in a 218m long full-height atrium running its entire length. We wanted to exploit this uniquely long interior space by creating a rooflight which plays with the viewer’s perception from different levels and uses the lengths for a visual effect.

Project Details +

Project Details

LOCATION: Beirut, Lebanon
CLIENT: Samir Khairallah & Partners / Majid Al Futtaim Properties
DATE: 2013
SIZE: 3,305m² rooflight area
STATUS: Completed

Credits +

Credits

ACME: Julia Cano, Nick Channon, Kelvin Chu, Stefano Dal Piva, Deena Fakhro, Stephen Harker, Daewon Kwak, Friedrich Ludewig, Isabel de la Mora, Penny Sperbund, Naiara Vegara

The gently-curved rooflight is made from simple structural steel fins, each one identical to the next. A simple shift of each fin against the next gives the impression from below of a slow wave emerging. The rooflight rises to form the central atrium and connects outwards towards the rooftop restaurants, producing a natural external canopy.

Raw steel plates prior to cutting

Cut steel fin types

Steel fin final layout

Pairs of braced fins form beams, increasing the structural efficiency and giving alternating strips of transparency and solidity, light and shadow, which emphasise the reading of an undulating wave during the day and at night.

Fritted high-performance glazing combined with the alternating bands of solid shading help to ensure that the interior space remains cool, more like a shaded street than an interior mall.

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