Context A penthouse apartment with 360° panoramic views in a modern building in the heart of Beirut. The clients wanted a zen and precious refuge in the middle of the lively Gemmayzeh neighborhood. Architect Youssef Tohme was chosen to develop the spatial lay-out, and the development of the interior design was entrusted to Noro Khachatryan. Floor plan The floor plan unfolds as a platform around a rectangular central block of four elevator shafts and a staircase. The building’s DNA – is thus transformed into four zones, each with its specific functions, orientation and views. Circulation revolves around the edges of the central block. Hence, the centre is not merely conceived as a boundary to the outside world, but also regulates the organization of internal activities. Programme The apartment can roughly be divided into two sections: a strictly private area for the owners and the ‘formal’ area where guests are received. The first covers the entire south side and is conceived as an apartment within an apartment. Parallel to a corridor (which can be closed off entirely) the private area consists of an enfilade of master lounge, master bathroom, master dressing, and master bedroom. These interior spaces are bounded to the East and West by a spacious outdoor terrace designed by VDLA (Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture). Next to the master bedroom, an office space and library create a barrier with the open-plan living room. If desired, this buffer zone can also be closed off with sliding panels thus incorporating it into the strictly private area. On the West side of the apartment, a glass facade separates the living room from a long terrace. The front part of this long space can be delimited/separated by two semi-circular curtains mounted on a ceiling track (one light and the other thick & opaque) and used as a cinema/ projection room. The curtains for the projection room and the windows are designed by Petra Blaisse’s Inside Outside company. The textile adds a sense of dynamism to the otherwise perfectly composed environment. The guest room with en-suite bathroom is located on the North side. Through the use of folding doors, it can also serve as TV room or as an extension of the living room. In the East flank, which encompasses an open kitchen and a dining room, the formal and informal intertwine. Here, the omnipresent city/skyline only fleetingly appears through sight lines and vistas. The interior design is marked by a careful choice of materials, balanced proportions and a detailed finish. Materialisation The vast surface and nature of the floor plan determined the choice of noble, but sober, materials: Patara marble and Elm wood. The wood cladding around the central volume morphs into alcoves in the living and dining room areas and then continues into the ceiling. The wooden elements were treated with a custom-developed varnish in order to approximate the colour-character of the marble floor. The kitchen island in patinated bronze and ceramic stone, seamlessly blends into the environment in a similar fashion. This visual continuity strings the different spaces together into an uninterrupted sequence. The monumental wall in Guatemala Verde marble, contrasting sharply with the rather low-key environment, dominates the dining room. Here, as the green wall replaces a floor-to-ceiling window offering another view on the Beirut skyline, the focus is shifted to a sense of intimacy and togetherness. The four private areas, featuring variations on the basic materials, can be subdivided into different configurations through the use of sliding doors. When all the sliding doors remains open, offering a full view, these rooms still articulate as separate entities. The Patara and Elm in the master bedroom and master lounge are connected, respectively, to the mirrored walls of the master dressing and the jade-green box of Pentelico marble covering all four planar surfaces of the master bathroom. When all sliding doors are open, a kaleidoscopic perspective en enfilade unfolds, revealing four rooms with similar proportions but with diverging functionalities and finishes. When enclosed, these four spaces are clearly distinct from one another. The guest bathroom is entirely executed in Arabescato. The whimsical patterns of this impressive marble not only cover the floor and walls but continue into the face of the cabinets. Everything in this apartment has been designed to extract the occupants from the hustle and bustle of the outside world. The interior stands out as a peaceful, quiet and cohesive haven in sharp contrast to the noisy concrete jungle outside. While the choice of materials is absolutely crucial, the subtle, detailed finishing also contributes to create this effect. Details/Finishing The wooden ceiling, which was custom developed for this project, not only hides the utility lines, but also provides sound insulation. The entire ceiling is lined with irregularly spaced slits that, in their entire length, end with circular sound-absorbing cavities that capture and dampen sounds... while also housing a custom-made sliding system for the lighting elements, developed by the project’s lighting partner psLab. This concept allows to create a pleasant acoustic comfort in a space with a lot of reflective natural stone. The visual comfort of the unified colour palette is enhanced by the rhythms of the wood cladding. Panels, alcoves and doors all fit within a meter-wide grid that extends from floor to ceiling. The joints are accentuated by vertical cross beams and by dado rails and skirting boards above and underneath the cabinets and alcoves, hence echoing, as it were, the repetitive variations on grid patterns of traditional Middle Eastern architecture. Both the formal and the material choices triggered sophisticated and aesthetic peculiarities that had to be technically solved. The shape and mounting of the fittings on the sliding walls arose from the need to have them fully retracted into the parallel fixed walls. Since the pivot doors merely differentiate themselves from the wall surface with one outline, they are given pivots instead of hinges and a specific crosswise finishing instead of frames. Due to the fact that the tap and cupboard were conceived as one unit, a small ledge on top of the doors prevents the water from seeping through. The ingenuity and accuracy of this type of detail shows the skilled craftsmanship born of the symbiosis between the designer and the artisans. Production With a demanding and very involved client, an ambitious concept and a high degree of excellence in execution, this project required an unwavering focus throughout the entire construction process as well as a tight collaboration with technical experts and specialized manufacturers, all of whom were involved from a very early stage. The main Patara marble was chosen by the client and the designer in the quarry itself, and nearly all items in the apartment were custom made specifically for this project. The designer was asked to overview the design process to make the right decisions at all times. As the different technical elements of the interior as well as the finishing had to perfectly fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the designer had to constantly anticipate everything, a task rendered more difficult by the fact that much of the coordination was done at a distance. Agility, flexibility and swift action proved indispensable.