Set against the backdrop of global architectural production, the work of the Lebanese architect Nabil Gholam and his associates defies easy classification. On the one hand it can be regarded as a competent, modern, global practice for which the legendary SOM is still a model. On the other, NGA are capable of creating works that possess a uniquely grounded, local character at a variety of scales, from one-off luxury villas to the occasional monumental project at an urban scale, as in their entry for the Jabal Omar International Design Competition, planned for Mecca in Saudi Arabia at the turn of the millennium. It is paradoxical that this prosperous, sophisticated practice should be located in what is still, despite its prosperity, the unstable and often violent environment of Beirut.

• Foreword by Nicolas Véron
• Main Text by Warren Singh-Bartlett and Nabil Gholam
• Essay by Kenneth Frampton and Gökhan Karakus
• Edited by Warren Singh-Bartlett and Ana Corberó

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Contributors Biographies

Kenneth Frampton was born in the United Kingdom in 1930 and trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. After practicing for a number of years in the United Kingdom and in Israel, he served as the editor of the British magazine Architectural Design. He has taught at a number of leading institutions including the Royal College of Art, the ETH Zurich, EPFL Lansanne, the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, and the Berlage Institute in The Netherlands. He is currently the Ware Professor of Architecture at the GSAPP, Columbia University, New York. He is the author of Modern Architecture and the Critical Present (1980), Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995), American Masterworks (1995), Le Corbusier (2001), Labour, Work & Architecture (2005), and an updated fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History (2007).

Gökhan Karakus was born in Nusaybin, Turkey, in 1966 and studied architectural history and theory Vassar College and New York’s Columbia University in New York. The author of the books Turkish Touch in Design (2007) and Turkish Architecture Now (2009), Karakus works as an architectural critic, theoretician, and designer. His field of study is especially related to locality in design, modernism, and architecture. His recent work has focused on design and research in architectural strategies using informal urbanism in Istanbul and the history of post-war architecture and design in Turkey. He has contributed to publications such as Architects’ Journal, Bauwelt, Wallpaper*, Details, ID, and Icon Turkey and is currently working as the editorial director of Natura magazine, which concentrates on stone architecture in today’s Eurasian region. Karakus was a nominator and reviewer for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture. He has taught architecture and design at Istanbul Technical University, Bilgi University, and the Politecnico di Milano. He is the founder and director of the interactive and environmental graphic design studio, Emedya, which is based in Istanbul.

Nicolas Véron is a senior fellow at Bruegel, the Brussels-based international economic think tank, and a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. His research focuses on financial systems and financial regulation around the globe, including ongoing developments in the European Union. He has been involved in the creation and development of Bruegel since 2002, and since 2009 has divided his time between the US and Europe. A graduate of France’s Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole des Mines, his earlier experience included policy work as a French civil servant, and corporate finance as a junior investment banker, chief financial officer of a small listed company, and independent strategy consultant. In 2006 he co-authored Smoke & Mirrors, Inc.: Accounting for Capitalism (Cornell University Press). His publications in French include L’Architecture des Villes, co-authored with Ricardo Bofill and published in 1995 by Editions Odile Jacob.

Warren Singh-Bartlett is a writer who has been based in Beirut since 1998. He is the Middle East correspondent for London’s design, architecture, and lifestyle magazine, Wallpaper*. His work has also appeared in a number of other publications including Tank, the Financial Times, the Handelsblatt, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and American Express’ Departures magazine. Singh-Bartlett is the author of four guidebooks published in the Wallpaper/Phaidon Press Cityguides series — Dubai, Honolulu, New Delhi, and Beirut — and a collection of anecdotes, urban legends, and unusual facts about Beirut entitled Bet You Didn’t Know This About Beirut. He is currently working on two separate projects: a television series based on his book about Beirut and a second non-fiction book about Lebanon, which will be an account of his experiences there and the inspiring individuals he has been privileged to meet as a result.

Ana Corberó is the fourth generation representative of a family of Barcelona artists & master artisans. Her great grandfather worked with Gaudí for his wrought iron designs and had a trio with Pau Casals. Her grandfather was Spain’s topmost liturgical artisan, and her father is a sculptor whose work can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Knowing that she had to be a painter and an artist from the age of four, when she won her first national award, she wisely realized that seedlings cannot thrive in the shade of specimen trees, and given the fact that the elders actually disapproved of her choice, she eschewed the known environment to foster what would become her own artistic voice. Corberó won several merit Scholarships to study in the US, and France, and has lived in Dallas, Philadelphia, New York, London, Paris, and Beirut, and has held exhibitions in private and public galleries in seven countries and fourteen cities. Her work, which includes a variety of mediums (oil painting, drawing, ceramics, bronze sculpture, poems, installations, collages) may appear eclectic at first glance, but is thoroughly cohesive in its rigour to illuminate consciousness and reveal essentials and archetypes, always applying the ethos of economy of means with deep, if irreverent, knowledge of the craft of a given medium.