Gemini House In Lebanon By Karim Nader Studio

The house for a Gemini had to become two. Split in half and clad in grey, it houses two houses in one, one public and one private with a sliding partition in-between...

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From the architect: Remembrances of things past resurface on a canvas of gray, but a luminous gray, likethe translucent mist of an imminent dawn. The space which is now called loft wasonce the family house, also the uncle’s office, and the architect’s, now his own house,himself having now become an uncle.

A renovation as a rerun, or a second take on something that once was. Memoriesof the past uses persist and create superpositions of program that defy the usualnorms of functionality: a main kitchen diametrically opposed to the dining space, abedroom too far from its bathroom door, an entrance too wide to be just an entrance.But those clashes emit a new energy. What was once the dining buffet, enlarged,becomes the support for a program that never was in the picture: a yoga platform.

The wall that separated the house that was rented from the office that saw the birthof the first architecture office becomes rice paper thin, mobile, in Japanese shoji style,discreetly sliding in various reconfigurations of space and multiple visual effects. Thechildren bedroom become black as the presentation room, could receive the nowgrown up nephews, the occasional friend or the child to come. As for the previousoffice entrance, its door is now a window, but the family garden remains as luminousfrom the now home office with a stone wall background that was once outdoors.

At the intersection of those souvenirs that trail a public loop house on the gardenterrace side and a private loop house on the inner side, lies the musical. The uprightpiano, surmounted by a calligraphic trinity of presence, absence and the transcendentexpresses my dire need for harmony in the entrance that is too wide to just be anentrance.

Architect: Karim Nader Studio
Location: Ghazir, Lebanon
Year: 2023
Photography: Walid Rashid