On the cover of RECORD this month is a striking building, Stone Garden, in Beirut. The 13-story apartment tower—designed by Lina Ghotmeh, a French Lebanese architect based in Paris—is angled onto its tight urban site and wears a striated skin, cut with deep apertures, out of which spill profusions of greenery. The design was inspired, says the architect, by the brutal history of conflict in the city of her childhood. “Violence had always left its mark on the city’s building skins, hollowing these and leaving nature to invade every left-out concrete skeleton,” she writes. “In Beirut, you are invited to change your understanding of what a facade opening might mean.”
RECORD contributing photographer Iwan Baan, who brought this project to our attention, photographed it early this year, before the pandemic lockdown. Joumana Ghandour Atallah, a Beirut-based architect, was commissioned to visit the building and report on it for this issue.
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