A corner site location in Achrafieh’s Mar Mitr quarter imbues this project with corner-site challenges. While SOMA is renowned for double skin projects, WAVE wears its second skin out of necessity due to location and exposure: the longer site edge faces south and the shorter one faces west and demands that one extremely important and problematic issue be solve in terms of solar and heat. A unique identity was created through this second layer skin sunscreen. Extensive research revealed that a horizontal louvered system was efficient for sun screening. The regenerated parametric design reacts to an interior program whereby the depth of the louvers is variable according to which interior function it is shading and which interior function requires more or less privacy.

ARCHITIZER WINNER 2017