Dec 17, 2012 | Restaurants
K-Studio designed a 24-hour Lebanese Food market called Souk located along the coastline in Athens, Greece.
Yatzer described the project:
A feast for both the plate and the palette, it has been inspired by the characteristic features of Beirut – a multi-faceted city of historical and contemporary culture, religion, architecture and design. Souk sweeps you off your feet and offers you an escape and an adventure that is a real feast for all the senses.
Fresh, warm, eclectic and very inviting, the atmosphere in Souk is certainly stimulating. This incredible new restaurant provides a relaxed, sociable and fun dining journey. Imagine wandering around enjoying the delicious scent of the food, perusing eclectic stalls set in structural concrete columns on an easy to navigate grid. Imagine stopping to watch talented chefs using fresh ingredients to prepare various Lebanese delights such as, 'Manaoushi', 'Saj' and‚ 'Taouk' right in front of you. Yes, it's a real place and the hardest part of going to Souk, is deciding which of the delicious dishes on offer to choose from. The food is complimented with extra delights which result from the magical design of this dining space. As you follow the mosaic pathway on a culinary and aesthetic adventure you know that you have found a unique environment in which to relax and feast.
Jun 26, 2012 | Restaurants
Totally independent, the UK and International Restaurant & Bar Design Awards is the world’s only concept of its kind dedicated exclusively to hospitality design.
The Awards invites and receives entries from the world’s top architects, designers and hospitality operators.
Entries come from all types of environment including hotels, transport, business, industry, fine dining, education, sports and leisure, healthcare, government, aviation, cruise and retail.
The judges are a highly influential panel of top design, lifestyle & hospitality personalities, whose role is to recognise and reward entrants for design excellence. The winners of the various categories including the best designed restaurant and the best designed bar, will be announced at the RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London on the 6th September 2012. The shortlist was announced on June 20th, 2012 and included from the Middle East Cocteau restauranr designed by one of my favorite designers: Gregory Gatserelia.
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Nov 21, 2011 | Environment
Beirut, Lebanon is known to be a very polluted city. With the chaos during the years of war, building regulations were not respected, not to mention whatever ‘green’ Lebanon was known for is being diminished by the day. Political greed lead to the environmental catastrophe Lebanese are now living in. It is time to raise awareness and come up with solutions to stop the wrong and try to introduce alternatives or some kind of “patchwork” to the existing mess. This is where Studioinvisible come in, they proposed a concept to help Beirut restore some of its ‘green’.
Studioinvisible’s concept:
Given the circumstances, the most pragmatic solution will be to have a municipal decree that requires each building to grow it’s simple rooftop garden (by require we mean harshly implement, by force if necessary). Nothing fancy, just a couple of trees in a large fixed pot on each rooftop. As incentives to the urban population, the municipality can offer tax reductions or benefits to the buildings that have a well maintained rooftop garden, and the gardening/plant companies could offer discounts and sponsorship, and later claim that they turned Beirut green (we can already predict their campaigns).
There are many types of tree that can grow in the Beirut climate to 3-4 meters high in a simple 1 meter pot, such as the olive tree, the Schinum Molle, Morus Alba, Melia azaderachh, Punica Granatum, Etc… In order to prevent these trees from falling in case of high winds, they could be connected by three steel wires to the roof slab.
The advantages of having this done on a large scale are many. Better oxygen levels and a healthy environment is the first that comes to mind, but also a layer of trees will provide shade and accordingly soften the increasingly hot and arid climate, which in turn would lead to a lower level of energy consumption. Moreover, semi public green spaces will be created for the respective residents of each building, increasing even further the quality of living within the city itself. On the other hand, depending on the choice of trees and plants, these gardens can evolve into a sort of urban farming, yielding a small but valuable agricultural output.
Ultimately, If the plan works out, Beirut could become a rooftop wonder forest, the whole city as a Landmark: Beirutopia.
StudioInvisible (pronounced in French), is a multidisciplinary design consultancy working in the fields of Urban Planning, Architecture, Interior & product Design, Visual Branding and Political Science, and aiming to provide the world with Avant-Garde Design interventions as well as in-depth Cultural, Social and Political guidance. Composed of Architect and Urban Designer Wassim Melki, Colonel Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot, the studio is an open platform for debate and thought-sharing.
Do you think this is feasible?
Sep 9, 2011 | Art & Photography, blog
Beirut.com posted these beautiful artistic graffiti found on the streets of beirut. An artist by the name of Ginane Makki Bacho has taken the issue of discovering local street art in her own hands. Although Lebanon’s walls are more known for political messages, I actually loved the colors and compositions in these specific works. You can check Ginane’s page and Beirut.com for more.
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