Graduate architect Ziad El Khoury, who studied at the Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik, Lebanon, has sent us these images of his final student project called Icon of Beirut.

The angular tower is composed of two main volumes and the lower floors extend across the site.

It is a multifunctional public building, which contains internal green spaces. According to the designer, “it attempts to focus on the real identity of Beirut.”

Below is some text from Ziad El Khoury:

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Ziad El Khoury
My Final Project: Beirut Icon

Currently, towers are being created to mark the power of a firm or the wealth of a company or a man, and not to signal an urban event or the city in its real terms.

The contemporary tower dominates the city, but does not reflect its identity or the identity of its citizens.

This is the reason I am proposing the Icon of Beirut, which attempts to focus on the real identity of Beirut: cultural, commercial, religious, ecological and social.

This project is not a monolithic mass, but the transposition of the urban model of Beirut into a vertical scheme. This means the squares, roads, gardens etc. are transposed in a way which assures a horizontal and vertical continuity throughout the tower, and assures a relationship between open and closed, and public and private spaces.

The project concentrates the essentials of the public life of the citizens of Beirut, thus creating a multifunctional complex in its urban environment.

Above: ground floor

Above: fifth floor