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Plot # 1342-1343 (R3)

Beirut, Lebanon
Residential
Aborted 2009

Plot # 1342 is located in the vicinity of the French Lycee in Beirut and within walking distance of major institutional public projects such as the French embassy, its gardens, The French cultural center and its stadium, the Maronite and the Armenian Catholic cemeteries, the new St Joseph university extension, the French medical faculty…
The surrounding context being predominantly and permanently institutional with relatively low rise buildings; unobstructed views are granted on North, East and West orientations.

Access to the plot is from the eastern edge which marks the end of an access road that connects to El Moutran Street.

The periphery of the site is treated with a continuous blind property wall that holds the edge of an internal 1320-square-meter garden and isolates the ground floor from its immediate surroundings. The sloping of the ground from the access level at the center of the site to all peripheral edges raises the horizon line high above the ground and constitutes a continuous landscape in the foreground that dissolves setting the sky as background.

The façade of the building is treated as a vertical landscape that materializes by an assemblage of discontinuous planters of various depths and dimensions.

The 24-floor building has 5 typologies and a penthouse. The 135-square-meter simplex is a one bedroom studio. Two floors can be combined to a duplex three bedroom 285-square-meter apartment. The split typology A (3 bedrooms and a family room) has an area of 285 square meters while type B (two bedrooms) has an area of 210 square meters. Type F is a spacious (3 bedrooms and a family living) 344-square-meter apartment.

The plate has elongated proportions (34m x 8m) which allows for exceptional exposures to all spaces in the plan due to the double orientation of all rooms and their proximity to the peripheral edges of the slab (less than  four meters at any point in the plan). Unlike typical residential building typologies which are developed on deeper slabs, the MLF Tower apartments benefit from ample natural light, generous natural ventilation and exceptional continuous exposure to the outside.

On the 23rd, 24th and the roof, the 532-square-meter villa with its 205-square-meter roof terrace at 82 meters above street level.