Insights

Notes from the studio.

Occasional writing on architecture, materials and the craft of building — what we are thinking about, and what the wider profession is moving towards.

August 2026 · Perspective

The quiet return to regional materials

Across much of the profession, attention is shifting back to materials that belong to a place — stone, lime, timber and earth — chosen as much for their low carbon cost as for the way they age. It is a welcome correction: for years the same glass-and-aluminium language was exported to every climate, whether it suited the site or not.

Our own work has always leaned this way. In Lebanon, local stone is not a nostalgic gesture; it is the sensible answer to strong sun, salt air and long summers. We are glad to see the wider conversation catching up to what the region's older buildings already knew.

June 2026 · Studio note

Why we stay until the building is finished

Most practices hand a project from the designers to a separate contractor the moment the drawings are done. It is efficient on paper, and it is where a great deal of the design is quietly lost — in the substitutions, the shortcuts and the details that no one is left to defend.

We keep design, supervision and execution under one roof for exactly that reason. It is more demanding of us, but it is the only way we know to make sure the building that opens is the one that was drawn.

April 2026 · On architecture

Designing for the light of Beirut

Beirut's light is unusually direct. It rewards deep reveals, shaded terraces and rooms that borrow the sea rather than stare at it. We spend much of the early design on orientation and shadow — where the sun lands in July, how a wall can cut glare without closing off the view.

None of this shows up in a rendering. It shows up years later, in a house that stays cool and calm through the summer without fighting its own windows.

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