There’s always a dormant dream in the city, waiting to be brought to life. Nadim Karam is the man bringing the old Beirut back, one forgotten building at a time.

What’s your favorite place in Beirut?

We’re pretty happy in the office I guess [laughs]. It’s the walks I like about Beirut. Walking from my office to my house, through the small Achrafieh Staircase, gives you a great feel of the city. They really should take more care of the staircases, they’re rather important. Beirut is so many things. It’s a phoenix: it burns and comes back, awake and full of vigour. Beirut joins the sea and the mountain. Beirut is the crossroads of many places, so full of life and culture. But unlike other crossroads, Beirut has its specific culture. We’re Lebanese with a passion and we open our minds to other cultures. Beirut is tough.

Has Beirut been tough to you?

No no, she’s great. We do try hard, as I’m sure many others do. We’re all trying to contribute to Beirut, a city that is suffering so much. This creates lots of life and motion and so much energy investment in the city, which counteracts all that is happening. Although I work just as much abroad, this is where I always start.

What was it like to start here?

There’s a lot of room for urban art here. We started with the Sursock Museum and then we did the City Center project. It was wonderful to work on the National Museum and it was just after the war. I remember we needed to do something for the city, create a fantastic story for it. A story outside the war, a story to take the Lebanese mind off the killing and destruction. The philosophical question was: can cities dream? The goal was to create a movement, one that might bring about some positive change.

I remember the sculptures around the museum. That must have been a big deal.

A huge deal. The museum was on the firing line and inside they had all the artifacts buried in concrete boxes – which thankfully saved them. The aim of my project, ‘the Carrier’, was to carry the museum for the rest of the country to see. The sculpture was a story that I’d created, a huge structure right in front of the museum.

Quite the burden.

It’s, of course, metaphorical, a dream if you will. We as Lebanese were taking a break, celebrating the end of an old area and the beginning of a new. It is a burden, one we carry gladly into the future.

And why the National Museum?

The position of the museum on the firing line already says a lot. Everybody fights here, tooth and nail but everybody also meets here. We agree on it and fight on it; a very strong message by exposition. But let’s not forget its historical background. It very simply keeps the entire collective memory of the Lebanese. Putting ‘the Carrier’ there has a lot to do with the transportation of the Lebanese mind.

Did you feel it touched people?

People were affected because it was on the street. You have this 15 meter structure and sculptures on either side. It became an urban space, more so than usual. People could sit and talk, enjoy the sounds. There on the stairs you could see so many different manifestations of Beirut. It was beautiful.

But you didn’t stop at that…

Not at all. Soon after we held the City Center procession, ‘the Urban Toys’. It was an attempt to inject culture into a city built on commercialism and property. The impact of ‘the Urban Toys’ moving from one place to another was magnificent. People in their cars would slow down, or stop and stare at the sculpture, effectively watching the city dream for itself. Even our office. Our façade is here to make a difference. We created a façade that reacts to its area. This was a sniper zone, you know, so we did away with windows and instead used these metal beams. You can peek through them as a sniper would. In a sense, this is an intervention on a local street of Beirut. Reflecting your locale is very important.

For instance?

Like my family home in Daraoun. The stone responds to the cactus by the way we used the stone on its side. It’s raw and rough, like the cactus. The upper section is dreamy and has fans which give a climatic response. On the other side a turn leads you to a very old part of the house, part of the original wreck. It has openings to peep onto the street, which brings privacy, light and shadow. It’s a cascade of spaces that begins with the ancestors and goes up to the contemporary.

So you don’t take on private projects?

Of course I do but my pleasure is in the urban work. My urban artwork is for cities and while I take the initiative and make the proposal, the city has to accept it. One of my most exciting proposals for Beirut for instance is the Net Bridge, a modern structure that connects the City Center area to the Marina of Beirut. It’s still in model form and will one day become a reality.

Do you work more here or abroad?

I don’t know if I work more for Lebanon as such; it’s not like that. We always create our own work. When we don’t have a client imposing work on us we get the chance to sit down and create our own projects. ‘The Cloud’ project, for instance, was created to challenge the Gulf. It’s a project that was proposed to the Design Advisory Board of Dubai, when we were asked to create something to challenge the city of Dubai. So I thought, well, let’s live in a cloud.

What’s the Cloud?

‘The Cloud’ is a concept. It was a debate about the towers in Dubai. Each tower wants to be bigger than the other and the towers become more and more private and expensive. The Cloud was a parallel, a public space that towers, a park, a platform 300 meters above ground level.

I’m not sure about the 300 meters but what do you think Beirut will look like in a decade or two? Is Downtown the trend setter?

No, I hope there’ll be challenges and changes. Downtown has so many rules that don’t allow for creativity. But outside of downtown there are small pockets of good architecture. I often spot them while I’m driving around: individual buildings with connecting stairs on balconies and more. It’s looking up.

But not on a large scale?

The only people who can manage large scale transformations are large themselves; municipalities, Solidere and the like. We, the individual builders, can only do point intervention.

How so?

Well, we can’t get them to change the urban situation but we can intervene on a point by point basis. Like here, like this office. This makes a change for the whole street. I think this is like acupuncture: pinpoint the right places, or even if they aren’t the right places, and it’ll affect the whole city. I think there are many architects that like to intervene in these pockets. This is good. This will make all the difference for the city. A city is made of networks, traverses; if there’s an interesting point here and here, join them and you’ll have a part that’s new and different. In the end you’ll create pools of energy that spread and inspire. People around it become interested and want to follow.

What is your favorite place in Beirut?

I’m more a fan of the north, the seaside. My idea of relaxation is a nice, somewhat secluded rocky beach. Beirut is a confrontation of ideas. It’s a bit of a melting pot, a confrontation of cultures. Maybe a contamination of cultures.

I take it you don’t like city life?

I’m grateful for it, to be sure. I’m from the very urban Jounieh, and the city has always held a fascination for me. We would always head out to Hamra because Hamra nurtured all the social movements of its time. That is, perhaps, what moved me towards the arts to begin with.

Not architecture?

I had a passion for the arts, in general. I didn’t know if I wanted architecture or otherwise. When I finished school we had the war going on in ’75 and I wanted to join the Lebanese University. I liked music but it’s too late for that now and I liked painting. Slowly I found myself more attracted to build¬ing. I felt it was more concrete, if you’ll pardon the pun.

And then you left the country…

I’d started learning some Italian in the cultural center. I know you’re about to ask why Italian and not French.

I was about to, yes.

Well I heard that the masters of architecture were all Italian, so I took a year off to study their language. After that I applied to the University of Venice and got accepted. While I knew it was good, I really had no idea how big a deal it was. Turns out that all great architectural movements and debates of the time were right there and I was smack in the middle of it.

Sounds like a wonderful stroke of luck.

It was wonderful. I found support for my ideas and I got attached to the university and its people. It had a liberal education system; you decided what you liked, you picked your own teachers and you followed your heart. Aldo Rossi, Gregotti… these people set the level of the university. They were creating the ideas, adopting Le Corbusier’s and making their own.

I’m almost embarrassed to ask but do we even compare?

The local level of architecture is something of a question mark. Architecture is linked to politics and culture, its style is defined through the thoughts and feelings of the people. We don’t have the intellectual struggle necessary to create proper architectural systems. My generation of architects all carried back their education; we all studied abroad. Nadim Karam carried the Japanese style with him, for instance. We carried the outside influences with us and brought them here, back from America, France, Italy… on the one hand this is good: the differences in our styles create an interesting debate. On the other hand, whatever style we’ve managed might actually just be a bunch of imports.

So are you setting the trend?

We don’t really have pioneers of architecture. Our field is a new one, of course we now have an idea and it’s out there and being debated. It’s a merge of what we’ve brought with us over the years. I’m a bit against regionalising architecture though.

So no signature Beiruti style in the making?

We’re trying to create that really, we all throw in new ideas. One of my first projects in ’92, you ought to know it, is the Zouk Kababji. How could I turn our history and background into contemporary architecture? That was my first approach. Kababji was one of the first projects to be called local; local in ideas and local in materials. We used mosaics, like the old houses here but with different colors and pastels to adapt with the Kababji idea. Kebab is street food, something someone walks up to a stall and eats. It’s a public space, a local Arabic space. So I asked myself: How could I create a public space and keep it approachable?

And not intimidating…

Exactly. We created architecture for those who are used to walking up to a shawarma stall. Architecture affects people. Had I gotten Kababji wrong then its main clientèle would have been alienated. The idea has many facets you have to be on top of; for instance kebab should be on display so how should we display it?

Displays? You worked on the interiors of Kababji as well as the structure itself?

In places like this you have to. You can’t limit yourself with another designer’s ideas. Some residential buildings for instance require no interior work but with projects like Kababji, you can’t risk ruining the feeling you’re going for. It is all about feeling: the flute, the furnace, the circular fridge, these all became elements, each with its own feeling.

So maybe Kababji is the seed of Lebanese architecture?

I still don’t know if you can call it Lebanese, but it is certainly regional, Mediterranean. It belongs to a certain school of thought, a certain society. It was able to make changes to local architecture. It became a reference in a sense, yes, but certainly not the only one. But even as a reference, there are dangers. You have to go deep into an item and then build it; it’s not a simple copy and paste job. This is the danger in architecture. I always try to go back to the history, the foundation and see how I could develop it. This I do even in private houses, competitions and public buildings and will continue to strive for this in the future.

How does the future look for the country from where you’re sitting?

For Lebanon? I think Lebanon is what it is. This is the way it’s built. This is its structure. You have to be convinced of it within this structure. You want institutions, with laws and rules? [Laughs] But the way it is now, it isn’t bad. It’s never stagnant, it creates dynamism – although we could do without the wars and the dying part is something of a damper. But Lebanon’s beauty is exactly this. I love that each individual feels like a government. The government is there, sure, but so am I. I have my own power from benzene and water. No gas? No problem I’ll tap into my own.