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BLF Disaster Center

  • Ghazir, Lebanon

    Location:

    Ghazir, Lebanon
  • 1,750 sqm

    Area:

    1,750 sqm
  • Completed

    Status:

    Completed

  • Type

    Institutional

  • Consulting Structural Engineer

    Nabil Hennaoui S.A.L

  • Consulting Mechanical Engineer

    Barbanel

  • Built Area

    7,850 sqm

  • Client

    Banque Libano-Française

  • Project Manager

    Charles Maroun

  • Consulting Electrical Engineer

    Barbanel

An emergency data processing bunker for one of Lebanon's leading banks where the duality between the brutal exterior and the inviting common interior essence reflects our rethinking around a contemporary disaster center.

The Project, for Banque Libano-Francaise, includes four underground levels, a data processing center and four stories above grade. Upper floors are devoted to management offices and open spaces that would be used only in the case of a disaster. We studied the principle of the bunker because of its "brutalist" heaviness, coldness and the inevitable closure to its site of the facility located on a main road near Ghazir, a mountain village thirty kilometers north of  Beirut. By way of contrast we sought to create an unexpected lightness inside. the interior was thus conceived as a kind of photographic negative of the exterior.
  • Section
    Section
  • Section 2
    Section 2
  • Site Plan
    Site Plan
  • Mass Plan
    Mass Plan
  • Ground Floor Plan
    Ground Floor Plan

The main elements of the program are concentrated in a main structure with a central circulation space with stairways and generous overhead lighting.

This architecture, which gives as much importance to social aspects as spatial considerations, participates in the definition of a new type of urbanism. The bunker allows a rethinking of the concept of unity within the discontinuity of the city. the central, undivided void and its ramps encourages the free movement of users and encourages their receptivity to participation in a calm, collective activity.

Publications

  • Executive Life

    Executive Life - Summer 2015

    “A good project can’t be done without a good client. It’s always a dialogue”, Tohme says. “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”. Read More
  • Les Inrockuptibles

    Les Inrockuptibles - September 2014

    "The exchange between the individual and the collective creates public space." Society is changing and cities with it. For the architect and urban planner Youssef Tohme, curator of the Agora exhibtion 2014, the public space is "a frame that connects people." Read More
  • Libération

    Libération - September 2014

    “Today, there is fertile ground for innovation. Amidst the post-war anarchy, we sought solutions with hasty reconstructions that were not appropriate. Now we must ask how this city really reflects us”. Read More
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