Executive Magazine

Walking towards the light

by Jeremy Arbid June 2, 2015

written by Jeremy Arbid

Instead of hoping for good political news in Lebanon today, property hunters should just trust their fortunes. The country is much more stable than it looks, and smart money has every chance to find good real estate buys. At the same time, there are few bright spots for sellers. The uncertainty in the upper end of the Lebanese market has developers scratching their heads — their business models overwhelmingly depend on developing pricey new projects in order to maintain economic growth and cash flows. But with sales in that segment of the market remaining ‘rigid’, many are now looking to diversify their revenue streams.

The mid to lower end of the market — the affordable housing segment — is booming with demand, partly satisfied by mortgages backed by the central bank’s monetary stimulus. Even some developers who were previously locked into luxury projects are beginning to look at tapping into this market segment. The high cost of land in Beirut, along with buyers demanding homes accessible to arterial roads, point to areas like the suburbs above and below Baabda and around Metn to serve this demand for housing. Executive spoke with several developers who are currently planning or have already established companies to serve first time home buyers, but none spoke of shovel ready projects.

Lebanon is in desperate need of affordable housing options, but the government is ill positioned to coordinate the response. The segment is a cornerstone of the real estate market and the government’s lack of attention has thrown Lebanon into a housing crisis. Even the amended rent law, if it passes this year, is doomed to be ineffectual because Lebanon must pass a budget that considers funding for those tenants who cannot afford to pay the increase — the 2015 draft budget does not.

Housing needs in the country are not limited only to the Lebanese. Refugees — predominantly Syrian, but also Palestinian, Iraqi and Sudanese — also need access to cheap housing. A lack of governmental regulation has seen rental prices soar, followed by illegal evictions when those refugees who could afford shelter ran out of money.

In the end, Lebanon’s real estate market is looking at a long adjustment period before the ship might right. On the one hand, continued regional instability and the war in neighboring Syria have driven investors away and, as a whole, depressed the local economy. On the other, Lebanon’s political impasse has only compounded the situation. The stimulus offered by the central bank, only a quasi governmental actor, has, by many developer accounts, been the only force keeping the market afloat.

June 2, 2015 0 comments

Gadgets Tech

Starting from zero

by Louis Parks June 1, 2015

written by Louis Parks

Hosni Auji and Majd Akkar are the sort of people you can’t help but wish well. Auji, a graphic designer by training, and Akkar, a 3D artist and coder, had always hankered to create something of their own. Longtime friends, they joined forces a few years ago for a competition run by the Dutch embassy in Beirut. They later quit their jobs and worked odd hours in order to create Zero Age, their acclaimed indie puzzler game.

Sitting with Auji, you can’t escape his sense of bewilderment. Two and a half years of his life have been turned upside down, largely by a girl in a wizard’s cape and a pointy hat. A freshly minted game designer today, he says, “My whole life I was interested in games, but when I was younger it just wasn’t viable. You got these games, they came from Japan, you don’t know how they’re made, you just play them. It didn’t seem like a career path you could consider.” And neither was film directing — he had headed to Prague to study film after graduating from AUB in graphic design — “[it involved] too much man management, I was too scattered,” as he puts it. So he took the pragmatic course and returned to Beirut, where he worked for the design studio Penguin Cube.

Over time, Auji began to think about game design, as did Akkar. A catalyst appeared on the horizon when, in 2012, the Dutch embassy managed a game contest and the pair dived in. They created a demo, which gained them entrance to the competition and then, they took the leap. They quit their jobs.

Five months later, the two had completed their game, it moved from PC to iPad and it didn’t resemble the demo at all. They had a concept down, and the seeds of something greater. They won. With the $10,000 prize money, the friends gave it a shot, polishing it to become Zero Age.

After four months, and many changes of course, the concept was locked down. Zero Age is, in Auji’s words, “A 3D puzzle adventure for the iPad, but it requires lateral and spatial thinking.” It’s simple, but also brutally hard. You move a small girl dressed as a wizard around an isometric grid, on which there are blocks that shift in certain directions. You use the blocks and your various powers to move. It’s the sort of game where a single level can take hours and progress is often glacial. It’s also addictive. The way they designed it is as follows: they decided on an interface, whereby you tap on a node to move things around, later adding the concept of fixed nodes. They created puzzles, added an ability, tested it, added another ability and tested again, until they were combining multiple functions in one puzzle zone and elements from separate puzzles to create new, interesting levels.

Creating the puzzles and ironing out kinks was a laborious process and the game was increasingly deconstructed. Days ran into weeks, weeks into months. By December of 2013, the pair expected to launch in April of 2014, but for every bug they removed, another appeared, “The task list just grew, you fix one problem, you add two more, it just never ended,” said Auji. At that point, they hadn’t marketed the game at all, and there was no audio.

These delays led to their musician dropping out and, desperate for sound, Akkar came upon the idea of using music by Sergei Rachmaninoff. “There was no money for licensing, nothing!” said Auji. Rachmaninoff’s works were in the public domain and the licensing fee was relatively small. The name also came late in the game — they settled on Zero Age, a term that refers to a stage in the evolution of a star, for reasons that will become apparent when you play the game.

With October 2014 came the time to publish. Submitting to the App Store is a fraught time, developers can face rejection if Apple isn’t satisfied and Auji and Akkar were novices. “After two weeks, we got an email telling us the App was being reviewed. Forty five minutes later, bang, an email saying it’s been approved.” Auji couldn’t believe it. He assumed, incorrectly, that the process was automated.

It took 20 minutes to find the first bug. Auji’s parents downloaded the game and he saw a graphical glitch. It didn’t appear on his machine, nor Akkar’s. “Majd got on it, he had an idea about what was wrong. He did it really quickly, but then we had to submit the patch to Apple and wait again,” he said. It was approved and Zero Age had a day zero patch, the developer’s nightmare.

Emails flew and Pocket Gamer covered them, a few others too. Sales sat at 20 or 30 a day. One morning, Auji woke up and checked their statistics: they had sold 300 copies in a day. It could only be Apple. “A week after launch, we were on the App Store’s main page. We were Game of the Week,” he said, eyes wide, “It was crazy!” Sales hit 400 a day for a week. News sites got in touch and as discounts drove further sales, they were shortlisted for Casual Connect Europe’s Indie Game Awards. In no time, they were all over the internet. At present, Zero Age sits at 72,000 downloads and has brought in around $10,000. Sales currently hover around $300 per month — the game business isn’t necessarily a money making one.

Auji smiles, “It’s not enough for two years work, so, we’re planning on releasing it on Steam, the PC and Mac distribution system, and Apple’s Mac store.” The future looks promising from here: a launch, on other platforms, supported by a marketing drive, is sure to bring in additional revenue, but it’s perhaps the hints as to what’s possible that are most interesting.

“Once we’ve done Steam and Apple, I’ve got a few side projects. Majd wants to do a fighter,” says Auji. They’d do things differently next time around; “we’d certainly market more,” he says. The learning curve was steep, but as a first step, Zero Age has to be seen as a success. The two have proved they can create a fun, visually stunning game, and the confidence it has given the pair suggests a bright future, once the dust finally settles.

June 1, 2015 1 comment

Editorial

A hellish limbo, a darker future

by Yasser Akkaoui June 1, 2015

written by Yasser Akkaoui

There’s nothing like entrepreneurial energy — if it’s there, you feel it as soon as you walk in the room. That’s what I felt when I recently addressed the Start Up Lebanon conference in New York. The room was buzzing with creative talent — our talent — ready to storm the American startup scene.

Why were our kids doing this in New York instead of Beirut? The most glaring reason: US officials and executives really believe in young entrepreneurs. They listened intently to these fresh voices — which made the presenters even more serious and more determined to realize their ideas. Who does that here in Lebanon? I can think of just one person, our central banker. Every other official is too worried about shoring up their own personal fiefdom to see the extraordinary potential in our youth. So our youth leave — for Dubai, Paris, San Francisco and New York — and build the future there, for the Emirates, France and America.

This egregious negligence is not a partisan or sectarian issue. It doesn’t matter if they’re named Aoun or Berri or Geagea or Hariri or Jumblatt — they’re all guilty of letting our nation waste away as they plot to gain more power for themselves and their families. And this tug of war has had far reaching economic consequences. In addition to sacrificing our best and brightest to other countries, our so-called leaders — a misnomer if ever there was one — have saddled our country with a hybrid economic system that simply cannot work.

With the collapse of governance and devaluation of the lira in the 1980s, our historical French model became untenable. Postwar, most leaders recognized this, and Rafik Hariri set our country on the path towards the American model of an economy driven by a vibrant private sector. But reform stalled. State owned enterprises were not privatized. Government ministers began to view their portfolios as belonging to them — not the people. The result? A strange, hybrid economic model whereby we expect private enterprise to drive the economy, but keep it so heavily burdened with bureaucracy that this becomes impossible.

We must choose one model or the other: either complete the reforms begun in the 1990s, or revert back to a French style system, complete with independent, activist unions. Our current economic dysfunction is not just untenable, it’s morbid. The longer we continue ignoring this problem, the more young talent will leave our shores for brighter futures abroad.

That means a darker future for Lebanon. And that’s precisely where our ‘leaders’ are taking us.

June 1, 2015 1 comment

Brands Tech

Audemars Piguet

by Roman St Clair May 30, 2015

written by Roman St Clair

In 1979, Beirut scored a coup in the watch world when class act Audemars Piguet opened their first Middle Eastern boutique. Unfortunately, the revered Swiss horologists were ahead of their time — the Civil War arrested both commercial enterprise and the city. However, fast forward to 2015 and Audemars Piguet is back, bold and beautiful to behold in a new Downtown store on Weygand Street. The shop’s neutral palette of creams is balanced by dark wood and blends in nicely with the surrounding chic of the central district. Here, the past has indeed been erased, even if the boutique manager has no recollection of that first little shop opened so precariously during the war.

Inside the boutique (which physically resembles one of its own showcase cabinets on the outside, with a polished glass façade and a ‘look don’t touch’ vibe), are some of the world’s most exquisite chronographs. Inoffensive jazz plays across a soft beige carpet and black paneled walls, and silver teardrop lights hang from the ceiling. The ambience, as a whole, ticks with a discreet kind of opulence as I settle into a deep leather chair to begin my perusal of the much more than arm candy. The pieces with high complications, some more expensive than houses (watch prices begin at $15,000), are brought to me on a velvet tray and I cannot help thinking how the booty used to create one watch would see an old fashioned pirate well into his retirement.

Many have 18 carat gold bracelets, platinum casing, diamond set dials and sapphire crystals, all piled up so the finished product sits as heavy as a small cannon ball on the wrist. But that’s not really the point. The point is that this is the still independent, family owned brand behind the minute repeater and jumping hour watches (in the 1920s), the world’s thinnest wristwatch (1940s), and the first self winding caliber that was considered the world’s thinnest (1960s). These were followed by ultra thin, self winding wristwatches with perpetual calendar and tourbillon movements in the 1980s, Grande and Petite sonnerie in the 1990s and a high frequency chronometer in the 2000s. Audemars Piguet is also one of those rare watch brands that is still owned by its founding families — in this case, both Audemars and Piguet.

I try on the Royal Oak Tourbillon Chronograph 44mm for size — it was their first steel high end watch in the early 1970s — and a handsome one it is, with its luminous hour markers on a black “Grande Tapisserie” patterned dial and textured rubber strap. Whether you’re familiar with the world of watches or not, you’ve probably heard of the tourbillon — a highly complicated and challenging, gravity defying mechanism that is often shown off in a rotating cage on the watch dial to demonstrate how intricately it works. This one, comprising 216 extra parts, shaves off the 3–5 second inconsistency that comes with your average kinetic charger. The price for this temporal pedantry is $255,000. But then, who can put a price on time?

The Royal Oak Tourbillon is the kind of watch you see coming and since I am more for understatement, I would actually go with the wafer that is the extra thin Jules Audemars 41mm rather. Elegance on a strap, and a clear reminder of the quality that put the brand among the world’s foremost watchmakers, the 18 carat pink gold case, silver toned dial, brown alligator strap and gold buckle, add up to a lot of lightly worn class. A comparative steal at $30,000, it’s got sleek sophistication, and we can bet that it’ll stand the test of time, generations down the line.

May 30, 2015 0 comments

Business

SkyBar on fire

by Nabila Rahhal May 29, 2015

written by Nabila Rahhal

In the early morning hours of Thursday, May 28, the famed rooftop club SkyBar was hit by a fire that destroyed three quarters of the venue and caused severe material damage, according to its general manager Paul Aoun.

“While it is too soon to assess the exact amount of the damage, we estimate it to be in the millions of dollars, especially since we were just done with the annual maintenance renovations and ready to open for the season during the first week of June,” says Aoun.

SkyBar first opened in 2003 on the rooftop of Ain El Mreisseh’s Palm Beach Hotel, before moving to the rooftop of the Beirut Exhibitions and Leisure Center (BIEL) in Downtown Beirut, more specifically to the rooftop of the BIEL Pavilion which they rented, according to Aoun.

With a customer capacity of 1,500 and a rotation of 2,500 on a busy weekend evening, SkyBar very quickly became one of Beirut’s most popular nightclubs. Despite the downturn in tourism in Lebanon over the past two years, the venue still managed to turn profits through unique strategies such as opening four nights a week instead of all week.

SkyBar is managed by Sky Management, whose CEO is Chafic El Khazen, and was the main outlet for the group in Beirut until the opening of their indoor venue O1NE, also in BIEL, two years ago. Sky Management’s portfolio in Lebanon also includes Liza, a restaurant offering Lebanese cuisine that opened last year, and Jounieh’s La Crêperie, which Khazen renovated and launched just last month.

According to Aoun, the fire at SkyBar is not only a huge loss in the economic sense, but also in the sentimental and emotional sense, since SkyBar was the venue that started Sky Management and contributed to their subsequent success. Commenting on SkyBar’s employees for the season, Aoun said they would be assimilated into their other venues — mainly La Crêperie and later Twenty Seven, a pop up club in Beirut Souks that opens only in winter.

Sky Management has total liability insurance, including business interruption insurance, and although SkyBar’s fire is a “major mishap,” according to Aoun, the group feels confident they will survive it.

Correction: An earlier version of this article erroneously identified Sky Management’s pop up club in Beirut Souks as 21. The correct name is Twenty Seven. Apologies.

May 29, 2015 0 comments

Culinary Art Restaurants

Inside les caves de taillevent

by Nadine Khalil May 29, 2015

written by Nadine Khalil

I’m having one of those rare moments, I’m sipping a Lambrusco with an oenophile. I say this because these Italian sparkling reds can be quite rare to find (many people aren’t even aware they exist) and, they seem to have fallen out of fashion 20 years ago. These are precisely the reasons why I love them; they are the lesser known gems of taste.

Less fizzy than champagne and lighter than an actual red, I find a Lambrusco is a good starter wine, the perfect accompaniment to most meals, and great with dessert. It’s an easy wine that still has some texture to it. If Paul Choueiry, my fellow wine sipper, agrees, he doesn’t say so right away. Understandably — since he is somewhat of an expert and not all Lambruscos are high quality — but one thing is clear, he is happy to pour me some. And, he takes pleasure in those who enjoy their wine.

I first met Choueiry at a wine pairing (and tasting) event a few months ago for the prestigious Château Palmer at Les Caves de Taillevent, where we are chatting today. Then, we tried various velvety and fruity bouquets by Palmer, from their full bodied, expressive 2005 Alter Ego label to the more complex Château Palmer 1995 vintage and the subtle, precise and refined 2001 and 2005 bottles, which rolled on the tongue like silk. With restrained tannins, generous compositions and a hint of spice, they were remarkable wines, evolving richly with the food. Until then, the only restaurant in Lebanon that I knew had wine pairings was the upscale Burgundy.

But Les Caves de Taillevent offers much more than that — not just a wine shop and wine pairing restaurant, it also serves as (what they call) an academy for winemaking and appreciation classes, which comes in handy since this is a veritable wine cellar of 1,600 labels, the vast majority of which are French. Also, Beirut is the only outpost in the Middle East, since March 2013; Taillevent’s birthplace is in Paris (where the restaurant also received one of the very first Michelin stars in the 1940s, and then two more before it lost them) and it has another branch in Tokyo.

If we are to go back to why I’m sampling a Lambrusco with Choueiry, it’s because I’m listening to the story of how he ended up here — here, in the nonliteral sense. To the observer, Choueiry’s journey into becoming a wine connoisseur could be obvious. He tells me his grandfather was actually a winemaker, who launched Clos St. Jean in Chtaura after learning the trade in Argentina, and opened a wine bar on Foch Street in the 1930’s.

“I was interested in collecting wine bottles,” he says, in his soft spoken, curious manner, “though I had no experience. I would go to the grocery store and choose the ones that had sediment in them. At home, we didn’t have the culture of drinking wine every day, but my father had this idea of keeping a vintage wine that corresponded to the date of birth for each family member.”

On a whim, he applied to the University of Burgundy in Dijon, after completing his pharmaceutical studies at the Lebanese American University in the late 1990s, and he got in. “I was one out of five non French who did [get in], among 489 applications. When these things happen, you simply stop asking questions.” His degree would be in Oenology, or all aspects of winemaking and production. “The sommelier is only a part of this,” Choueiry explains. It is a much more holistic kind of knowledge. “For example, you would learn things like since 2010–11 was a warm summer, there was lots of alcohol in the reds of that year, and the whites were destroyed by the heat. You could appreciate the impact of such challenges on wine and all the factors involved in the making of…” We go off on a tangent about how warmer climates are bad for grapes because of the level of maturity they reach before harvest — the sugar becomes ethanol — which is why many of the Lebanese wines can taste quite young, and why you need harsher soil and climate conditions for really mature wines.

Before Choueiry returned to Lebanon, he worked as director of production and sales manager at Château de Mauvanne in Hyères, in the Côte d’Azur and also in Monte Carlo, managing Caves et Gourmandises, which was known to supply the Formula 1 Grand Prix. Once back home in 2003, the reality of the local wine industry hit him. “It was still small then and I realized that you had Musar, which always had in house winemakers, or Ksara and Kefraya, who always employ French ones. So I decided to open my own wine bar and consultancy business.”

Perhaps too ambitious a project, the wine bar soon became a pub, to cater to the general public’s tastes. And in 2004, Choueiry found himself with a proposition from the Beirut airport’s duty free department to create the foreign wine category and to turn $14,000 worth of wine into $2 million. At the time, the taxes on imported wine dropped by a whopping 50 per cent, a good opportunity to gain market share. His position later evolved to see him take over the whole alcohol section (including local wines) and liquors.

It was five years later, when he became a unit buyer for the prominent Lebanese distributors Fattal, also for foreign wines, that he proposed bringing Les Caves de Taillevent to Lebanon, with their help. This collaboration, he tells me, enabled him to handle the retail and distribution side of the wines as well.

Taillevent is known for its diversity of having both the well known appellations, as well as a homegrown propensity to discover virtually unknown wines made in small areas in France, which are then distributed under the Taillevent label. “Of course, we had the option of going it alone,” Choueiry says, “but this means we wouldn’t have had access to these rare allocations of wine produced in small French villages, which didn’t have the capacity to be present in the winemaking expositions for instance, and would have remained unknown to us.”

The need to add good food to the mix only arose last December when Choueiry decided to join forces with Lebanese chef Maroun Chedid (before, only charcuterie, foie gras or salmon was offered at the wine bar). When I ask him why he chose Chedid, he explains how they initially worked on a Christmas menu and, “It was like, you know how crazy minds meet. I mean, he cooks the Joues de Boeuf (Beef Cheeks) for 60 hours in order to conserve the flavor.” I didn’t believe it until I got a chance to taste it for myself. When I wondered aloud at the dissolving meat’s intense succulence, Chedid pulled out one of his beef bags to show me how he cooks each piece, enclosed, at 66 degrees, and yes, for 60 hours.

Though very much self trained as a chef (he studied hospitality primarily), Chedid has a few awards under his belt, such as Chef of the Year (2013) by Les Toques Blanches du Monde, and he has collaborated with Michelin starred chefs, such as his seminar with Alain Ducasse on Mediterranean cuisine. He also has a slew of good local restaurants attached to his name, like Gilt, among others.

You could say he is a bit of a purist. He slow cooks basic ingredients to reach the ultimate intensity of flavor or works with raw food, such as octopus carpaccio slices, by simply dipping them in a bit of olive oil, lime and yuzu. And Chedid does take seemingly simple starters to another level, like his tomato tatin (cooked for four hours) that bursts with surprising juice, topped with goat cheese, or the more traditional ravioli, rich in truffle and toasty beurre noisette (a nutty, caramelized butter). Willing to push some boundaries, he is known for adding truffle even to his kibbeh nayyeh for example. With the seasonal menu he has created for Caves, accompanied by a high caliber of wine and sommeliers’ well informed recommendations, it’s the perfect balance between the classic and the creative in fine dining. There are so many items that stand out, it would be difficult to pick just one.

Which reminds me of how, when our conversation was drawing to an end, I asked Choueiry if he had a favorite wine. He responded with another question. Could I say what my favorite song was? I couldn’t. “It’s the same for wines, it really depends on the situation you find yourself in.” I tried to push him to at least give me a favorite red, because I believe they are superior to the whites. “For you to have a great Pinot Noir Alsace with a pizza, that would be crazy, and fantastic. But some whites are orgasmic,” he says, “Every moment has its bottle.” As I leave the plush interior furnished with blonde wood, wine barrels for tables and stacks of gleaming dark bottles, I cannot help thinking how well he summed it all up.

May 29, 2015 0 comments

Real Estate

Sporting design

by Executive Editors May 27, 2015

written by Executive Editors

Stadiums, like other large public meeting areas, do not exist separate from their surroundings. They form an integral part of the landscape, influencing not just the look and feel of an area, but also how individuals interact with it. Executive looks at two stadiums — both past their prime — that display contrasting approaches to the use of space. Sidon’s large, iconic stadium expresses separation — not just from the physical city, but from its residents as well. Meanwhile, Beirut’s smaller Municipal Stadium has fallen even further into disrepair, but is an integral part of its neighborhood. Residents can watch games from their apartments which overlook the stadium and can enter the facilities to run, walk, play or just hang out.

Seafront Sidon

Built on the old municipal stadium for the 2000 AFC Asian Cup, the Sidon International Stadium is one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks — but its design echoes another of the city’s icons. The stadium “captures all the elements of Sidon’s citadel and the relationship of the citadel with the city. You have the dome structure, the bridge moment and the density — and then there is the moment of silence in between them,” comments Hani Asfour, an architect with Beirut design firm Polypod.

“What also helps is the combination of symbols … the arch is symbolic of ancient tradition, then you have a tent structure which is symbolic of Arab culture if you want, but also of a Mediterranean climate. It reminds you of Jeddah airport or the Olympic stadium of Munich,” says Asfour.

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Urban Malaab

Beirut Municipal Stadium is also an integral part of Lebanon’s sports infrastructure. But unlike Sidon International Stadium, it finds itself in an urban setting, sitting in Beirut’s dense Malaab sector. “The Baladi … is derelict, rundown. [You] have this very dense and unkempt urban condition surrounding it, [so] what happens is that it blends [in]. Practically, the surrounding buildings are in the field in a way [such that] you don’t need the seats anymore — so the city becomes the stands,” says Asfour.

“For me, the strangest condition is the wall that separates the city from the pitch … This should become a social space and there should be no central point of entry; you enter or you leave wherever you want — it should be completely porous,” suggests Asfour.

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All pictures by Rabih Ibrahim

May 27, 2015 0 comments

Architecture Design

Concrete contradictions

by India Stoughton May 26, 2015

written by India Stoughton

The heart of the matter lies in the answer to a simple question, which is quite common when conducting an interview, of course. But in this case, it’s Youssef Tohme asking me the question, not the other way around.

“What’s the difference between your physical body and your morals?” the Lebanese architect asks me in his fluid French. “If I said I was going to define you, what defines you better?”

I’m not used to being on the receiving end of questions when I interview people, particularly philosophical ones, and I’m not sure how to answer.

“My morals?” I hazard.

He pins me with a stare. “Are you sure?” he asks, in a way that tells me I’ve picked the wrong answer. “The truth is we don’t know, because your body plays a role in your morals. You’re the way you are because of both. That’s what interesting, this give and take.”

We’re not discussing the relationship between spirit, soul and body. We’re talking about concrete — and why Tohme chooses to use it in so many of his buildings. But his allegory makes his point eloquently. Concrete serves a dual purpose. In Tohme’s buildings, it is both structural and aesthetic — the moral core and the physical exterior. For him, designing a building is like creating a self portrait. The architect, he says, is always reflected in his work.

Having graduated from the École d’architecture de Paris-Villemin in 2004, Tohme worked for some years under Pritzker prize winning architect Jean Nouvel, before leaving in 2008 to set up his own firm, Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates (YTAA). We’re joined in our interview by his partner and general manager Anastasia Elrouss, who graduated with a degree in architecture from the American University of Beirut and went on to work at Jean Nouvel’s Paris practice, where the two met.

Youssef Tohme & Anastasia Elrouss

Tohme’s buildings seek a delicate balance between openness and intimacy, or insularity, thwarting preconceptions by creating one mood on the outside and another within. He likes to respond to questions with more questions, in architecture as well as dialogue, and that’s partly what led him to set up his practice in Lebanon.

“A good project can’t be done without a good client. It’s always a dialogue,” he says. “And the clients here are becoming more accepting that we ask questions, that we take risks, that’s what pleased me. At the same time, there’s something interesting, which is that we know how to adapt ourselves, because we live in a society that’s always afraid of disappearing. We fell into the war so we try to advance ourselves, to stay alive, but there is no vision. We think, ‘Tomorrow we might not be here,’ so we plan only for today. We’re in a country of contradictions. It’s gentle and violent at the same time. It’s an architecture that is neither static, nor dynamic.”

Tohme’s own projects play with Lebanon’s contrary spirit. Take Villa T, for instance, a private residence in the Lebanese mountains. Tohme chose to design the building so that it has two simultaneous identities. From one side, it blends seamlessly into the landscape, seeming to flow out of the earth on which it stands in an uninterrupted sweep. From the other side, its dramatic cantilevers jut out abruptly over the surrounding pine forest.

Villa T

It might be that Tohme’s diverse influences account for this striking contrast. “When it comes to architecture, it’s two extremes. It’s Rem Koolhaas and Peter Zumthor,” he says of his inspiration, “because Koolhaas is very theoretical. And Zumthor is physical. And I want both.”

Though Tohme is perhaps best known for his work on the Campus of Innovation, Economy and Sport at Saint Joseph University, in collaboration with 109 Architects, most of his local projects are for private clients. Currently, he is working on two characteristically contradictory private buildings.

Construction is about to begin on a design for Banque Libano-Française’s Disaster Center, located in Ghazir. The building is intended to safely house the bank’s headquarters in the event of a war, and also to protect the staff and their families. Expanses of concrete form bunker like curved walls that resemble the defensive shell of an animal. On the inside, however, the building is airy, suffused with light and connected by a central circulation system that rises four stories high and descends a further four stories beneath the earth.

Banque Libano-Française’s Disaster Center Design

“I lived through the war, so I know that faced with that, aesthetics efface themselves,” Tohme says. “In wartime, the codes fall away, and I’d speak to you as if I’ve known you for 10 years because we are both afraid. It was this that we wanted to put at the heart of this project. That’s why it’s a project that’s open on the inside, and outside it’s something that expresses itself as simply as possible. Defensive. Protective.”

By contrast, the apartment building Tohme has designed for Ashrafieh strives to be as exposed as possible to the outside world, all but abolishing the necessity for a traditional façade. By stacking floors vertically around a central core, Tohme has created a great deal of flexibility when it comes to the layout of the 16 apartments. Interior green walls and terraced gardens ensure residents feel connected to nature, while the exterior walls are set five meters back from the edge of the building, creating a sense of privacy from overlooking neighbors.

Meanwhile, Tohme is working on his most ambitious project to date. Having won a competition organized by the municipality of Bordeaux in 2013, he is designing an entire quarter of the city, extending over 60 hectares.

Located on the right bank of the Garonne River, Brazza Nord used to be an industrial area. Close to the heart of the city, which lies just across the river, the quarter is near a large public park and it is this green space that has come to define Tohme’s approach. His design seeks to connect residents to the nearby river and park via three strips of green space 40 meters wide and 500 meters long.

Here, Tohme is moving away from his signature concrete to work with metal cladding, a nod to the quarter’s industrial past. The quarter is also designed with those in need of affordable housing in mind. Tohme and Elrouss have approached this by allowing each resident to buy not one apartment, but one “volume,” priced by the square meter. These volumes can be divided up by adding a slab to create two floors, thus doubling the size of the space, whenever residents have the money and the inclination to do so.

“It’s five meters high and you buy only the surface area,” Elrouss explains. “So let’s say you buy 45 square meters square, but with time you can have 90 meters square and you only pay for 45 … Why five meters? If we go to 5.5 then the contractors or the investors can divide it into two floors legally. But five meters is the limit of height where the inhabitant is empowered. We used it in order to allow people to be really in control of the evolution of their apartment.”

If Tohme’s practice is clearly at home with Lebanon’s contradictions, he appears to revel in the challenge of seeking new ways to confound expectations in his work, which has proven to be versatile according to the context. Even with several of these high profile international projects on the go though, he’ll tell you that he is still staunchly committed to local projects, offering a ray of hope for those who fear the eventual loss of Lebanon’s wealth of talent overseas.

Photographs By: YTAA Architects, Iwan Baan & Ieva Saudargaite

May 26, 2015 0 comments

Auto Test Drives

A Maybach comeback by Mercedes

by Louis Parks May 25, 2015

written by Louis Parks

The Maybach is back. This troubled brand has finally been relaunched, as a supersized S-Class with a V12 providing the grunt. It’s true that it has been a few years since the Maybach brand, which used to be owned by Daimler, slowly slid below the water as the result of patchy sales and stiff competition from the likes of Rolls-Royce and Bentley. But now, under the Mercedes umbrella, it appears ready to re-enter the race.

A long wheel base S-Class, the Maybach boasts a sizeable list of options, but before we get to the interior, let’s judge the book by its cover. At first glance, there’s little difference between the Maybach S600 and her S-Class siblings. The shape is quintessentially Mercedes, yet there are subtle distinctions. For one, the grille has been redesigned slightly to give it a more classic look, the rear doors are lengthier to ease access and the S600, despite being the longest vehicle in the fleet, appears balanced and proportioned. A beautiful machine, there’s nothing bulky about it — see it at a distance, and you’d be hard pressed to identify it and surprised when you finally do.

But who are we kidding, this car shines through its passenger experience, so here we go. As a car designed for the driven, rather than the driver, the addition of sound dampening technology to the monstrous V12, as well as improved door seals and cushioned tires means that the S600 is an effortlessly smooth, quiet ride, deceptively so when you consider the block of rumbling metal that lies under the hood.

In the aptly named First Class Cabin, the rear area of the Maybach, you’ll find a small freezer, large enough for several bottles of champagne, a hidden recess with champagne flute holders, fold-away airplane style tables and another glass holder that, get this, can either chill or heat your glasses — this is an area that’s designed with comfort in mind. The seats have ludicrously soft headrests and some of the most comfortable padding I’ve ever sat on. Oh, and they’ll massage you too. Of course, you’ve also got your independent AC, reading lights, two screens linked to a DVD player and curtains for the windows.

So where does this leave us? Between Bentley, Rolls-Royce and the Maybach, lovers of large luxury cars are spoiled for choice. Above all, the Maybach leaves a sense of attention to detail that only Mercedes can get right. Sitting somewhere between the Flying Spur and the Ghost, the Maybach is quite clearly a spectacular machine. The fixtures might not be quite as refined as a Rolls, and it might not have the all round good looks of a Flying Spur, but it’s certainly one hell of a car. Welcome back, old friend.

May 25, 2015 0 comments

Culinary Art Restaurants

Getting to know Liza

by Nadine Khalil May 24, 2015

written by Nadine Khalil

It might seem ironic that when a new Lebanese restaurant, Liza, opened in Beirut, I first heard about it not from local friends or colleagues, but rather, a Berlin based artist (who coincidentally, is married to a Lebanese), when she raved about the design of the place.

Set on the top floor of a refurbished, 500 square meter 19th century villa (above the Metropolitan Art Society), Liza’s design transformed what could have simply been a grand, ornate space into something with an ultra contemporary flair, though no less impressive. Floor-to-ceiling arched windows serve as partitions and passageways in the lofty, light flooded interior; the custom made wallpaper patterns are like stunning modernist frescoes — large banana leaves in one room, an interpretation of Beirut cityscapes in another, and blown up ancient Lebanese lira notes in a third. Hanging from the ceiling, you will find everything from three dimensional gold stars to a flying elephant.

“You know, it’s crazy but our biggest budget was for the lighting,” Liza Asseily tells me, laughing. She is the co-owner of her namesake restaurant in Paris (which opened in 2005), along with her husband, and now, the new Liza in Beirut, which opened a year and a half ago. “We’ve even got some Tom Dixon here and the star shaped lights are Hubert Fattal,” she says as we drink mastic-infused lemonade, one of Liza’s concoctions.

If all this seems to be too much visual stimulus, it isn’t. The decorative details are balanced by the restaurant’s expansiveness, and by the serene, more neutral palette of light grey-white marble tables with warm brown leather chairs. Fattal designed the interior of the Liza in Paris, but for this restaurant, the Asseilys were looking for something a bit different, an unknown. And sure enough, they chose someone who came from another field altogether; this was her first design project. “Maria Ousseimi is a friend, I was impressed with what she did with her own house … And when she took a look at the space, she felt this was something she wanted to do.”

Asseily also strikes you as someone who follows her gut. A bouncy, petite brunette with a lot of energy, she explains why she decided to get into the restaurant business with her husband in the first place. “We didn’t really have the experience. Ziad is in finance and I had studied hospitality in Lausanne. My family has been living between Beirut and Paris since the war and we were thinking, why do all the Lebanese restaurants have the same feel? Even if the food is fantastic and you get that wonderful plate of tabbouleh, there’s Fairuz for music and the man who serves you wears a typical moustache. Why do we have to show this image of our country? We have great artisans and so many young talents. So we decided, me and Ziad, that we wanted to show our Lebanon, our food and traditions, in a modern way.”

When it came to picking the location of their first Liza 10 years ago, the way they positioned the restaurant was a crucial factor for them to consider. “We didn’t want it to be next to the usual 8th arrondissement or the 16th and the Champs-Élysées, but on the second, next to the Palais-Royal. At the time, no one else was there, so we were pioneers in a way.” Asseily basically went with the first place she saw (she had a feeling about it), a fabulous 1920s building, relatively inexpensive, which now also has an adjoining Liza bakery. In 2011, they were asked to set up a temporary, pop up space in Galeries Lafayette, which became so successful that six months ago, it was made into a permanent one.

Yet the main arm of the business is actually catering (Liza Chez Vous) and they work for high end fashion brands, such as Lanvin, Kenzo and Chanel, among others. Despite their popularity in Paris for the past decade, Asseily confesses, “We always wanted to bring Liza home and in the back of Ziad’s head, he wanted to do it in this fantastic old Lebanese house.” Once again, they were lucky with their new address when Chafic el Khazen — the CEO of Sky Management — who became their partner for the Beirut venture, discovered this palatial mansion in Ashrafieh, originally owned by the first governor (of what was Greater Lebanon at the time) and then by the Bustros family.

Bringing Liza home was not without its challenges however. The Lebanese community, as compared to the French, isn’t as easily satisfied when it comes to their national food. “In France, we could have more liberty since many people don’t really know Lebanese food, if they aren’t originally from here. Even though my husband loves to cook and we designed our menu with a Lebanese consultant who trained the French chef, we wanted to look at how Lebanese eat today. So it was a risky approach from the very beginning.” Risky, because Liza takes an unusual, creative spin on culinary heritage.

“For example, I would have people coming up to me here, saying, you have no right to call this hummus when it has cumin in it and not tahineh!” (Interestingly though, the criticism must have had some impact because Liza names this particular dish as hummus balila and not just hummus, since it is primarily chickpea based and without the usual sesame paste). Liza’s innovative take on Lebanese cuisine extends to meals like daoud bacha, which is served with bulgur wheat instead of rice. And the overall presentation may not be generous in quantity (it’s presented in smaller amounts than what is customary in our part of the world) but the food is ‘generous’ in its wide ranging tastes, and the combination of different palates offered.

Whether it’s the daoud bacha, which has meatballs with a tinge of pomegranate set against smoky, fried onions, or oven baked cauliflower salad doused in sesame paste, the flavors all seem to have a tang from something added that diverges from the norm, like an unusual spice or an ingredient that doesn’t normally come with a particular dish. But this is not to say you won’t find the usual suspects. The fattit batinjein for example, an eggplant dish with yogurt, pine nuts and fried bread was crispy, saucy and cooked to perfection. They are also well known for their lamb shank with spiced rice and dried fruits (kharouf bi khams bharrat). As for mezze, Liza does it distinctively, in the form of a lunch tray option, beautifully designed by Karen Chekerdjian with concentric circles for the small portions. You have different choices, among them a vegetarian one that’s both gluten and lactose free — which Asseily says is part of how they want to cater to the modern lifestyle, by offering food that is wholesome and light.

You can see this clearly with their desserts too. Though I’m not at all a fan of Arabic sweets, Liza’s weren’t heavy with syrup and clotted cream (ashta). Their milk custard (haytalieh) with orange blossom and homemade blueberry coulis, or Ghandour biscuits with rose ice cream or their halvah ice cream with carob molasses and pistachio, were inventive — sweet, but not over the top.
If we were to play devil’s advocate here, we would ask whether ‘authentic’ Lebanese food can really be made contemporary when we don’t have the equivalent of haute cuisine (and the experimentations that come with it) and if it doesn’t follow then that when you mix two different genres together, you are bound to fall short on one. Liza definitely pushes the boundaries, yet without subscribing either completely to the traditional, nor completely to the modern, you have something in between. Still, as their approach to food demonstrates, this doesn’t mean you completely lose the essence.

Photographs By: Marco Pinarelli

May 24, 2015 0 comments