May 1, 2008 12:35

The New Levantine Style

Lebanon's contradictions -- it's the geographic and figurative bridge between East and West, modern and traditional, Muslim and Christian -- have been a source of both instability and inspiration. Last year, I wrote about Beirut's underground rock scene, and earlier this year about a few restaurants that are experimenting with regional traditions. Here's a quick overview of some of the more noteworthy Beirut architects and designers who are finding inspiration in their heritage to create a new Levantine look.

Photo by Karim Ben Khelifa

Bernard Khoury, Lebanon's most famous architect, takes locations and buildings associated with the Civil War and gives them a Blade Runner retro-fit. My friend Karim Ben Khelifa took this morning-after photograph of a Khoury designed nightclub -- B018 -- that used to be a bunker and that now blows the brain cells of ecstasy and techno loving teenagers with a moving ceiling that open up to the stars in summer. Khoury's other work includes an underground sushi restaurant near what used to be a main checkpoint on the Greenline that separated Christian East Beirut from Muslim West Beirut, and a proposal to paint a tubular sixties era concrete movie theatre half destroyed by artillery fire a bright shade of pink.

Nada Debs, a Lebanese furniture designer who grew up in Japan, uses the the ornate Levantine and Damascene style -- mother of pearl inlays and arabesques -- refined to a minimal, modernist essence.

On the more-is-more side of the furniture design spectrum, Maria Hibri and Hoda Baroudi have given dumpster-diving a Levantine makeover. They find pieces of antique and modernist furniture and then upholster them in Oriental textiles, and sometimes, Maria's daughter's, corduroy pants.

And just for fun, here's a nargileh, a traditional water pipe for smoking flavored tobacco that's a standard fixture in Arab cafes, designed by Sybille Abillama.

If Beirut remains an incubator for creative talent despite its wars and upheavals, avant-garde design in Lebanon remains an elite pastime, the purview of a secular, hipster scene. A country interested in nation-building would be using these people -- and like-minded intellectuals -- to transform its cities, its institutions, and curriculums. But Lebanon has no president, its parliament rarely meets, and most civil society organizations have a sectarian agenda. The re-imaginative power of Lebanese art ends up merely decorating the homes of wealthy foreign patrons, rather than transforming how people live in the Middle East.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut