The completed buildings of the French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh, although few in number, are works of strength and poise. Her recently completed leather-working workshops for Hermès, in Normandy, are a composition of variously shaped brick arches set to a rhythm inspired by galloping horses – a Roman aqueduct with the nervous energy of a stable of thoroughbreds. Her debut project, designed in a multinational partnership with the Italian-Israeli architect Dan Dorell and the Japanese Tsuyoshi Tane, was the Estonian National Museum, a statement of pride, optimism and defiance built on a former Soviet airfield.
Most impactful is the Stone Garden in Beirut, a 13-storey block of flats on which design and construction work started before her partnership with Dorell and Tane broke up, and completed after she set up on her own account in 2016. It combines textured concrete and deep-set windows with sharp angles and emphatic cantilevers to create something earthy and engineered at once, ancient and contemporary, daring but robust. In 2020 its metaphorical resilience was put to the test in an all-too-literal way, when a huge amount of ammonium nitrate on the MV Rhosus blew up in the nearby Port of Beirut. The Stone Garden was damaged, but survived.
