Told in the form of a cine-novel, this document compiles 20 years of my architectural practice and research. 32 projects from my current studio and collaborations with Blankpage, Roula Assaf, Danny Khoury and others are here presented in an order of thematic correspondences resembling more a screenplay than a classical architectural monograph. Re-written for this edition, the text reconnects all projects in one continuous narrative flow supporting the sequence of photographic moments, a medium here used exclusively in the absence of all other traditional modes of architectural representation. Some half of the projects actualize the successes of buildings completed and happily inhabited, the other remains future potential or aborted attempts now lost forever: the eternal story of the architectural adventure, the challenge of its uncertain path, its temporary pleasures and recurring wonders, its unfulfilled promises and unexpected successes. If often in this document I use the word ‘novel’, it is not to equate the art of architecture to the art of literature, but rather to insist on the importance of continuously looking at the lived experience of architecture in space and time as its core value (like in a novel), and the requirement for any art to always be new beyond the romantic nostalgia of a lost past or the fetishistic (quite often technological) celebration of the unknown future (the novel as in the new). All in all, it is once again the necessity to live poetically, humanely and naturally that this document attempts to manifest through my relentless passion for the architectural practice and my sentimental relationship with every site, every client, in every situation. Karim Nader

Karim Nader
For a Novel Architecture
ciné-roman 2000 - 2020
29,00€
27,50€
isbn 9788862424790
book series Alleli | Projects
number 11
current edition 12 / 2020
first edition 12 / 2020
language English
size 21x29cm
pages 244
print color
binding paperback
copertina download
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the author
Karim Nader is an architect, teacher and yogi. Born in 1976 in Lebanon under the sign of the Gemini, he has studied at the American University of Beirut (Bachelor of Architecture with distinction, 1999) and at Rice University in Houston, in the United States of America (Master of Ar...

Karim Nader is an architect, teacher and yogi. Born in 1976 in Lebanon under the sign of the Gemini, he has studied at the American University of Beirut (Bachelor of Architecture with distinction, 1999) and at Rice University in Houston, in the United States of America (Master of Architecture, 2003).
He has been practicing architecture for the last 20 years with work designed and built in Lebanon and the world. He is currently running Karim Nader Studio, an architecture and design practice based in Beirut. He has been also teaching architectural studios and theoretical electives at universities in Lebanon since the year 2000. Firm believer in the power of architecture to transcend the limiting vision of the global market as well as the psychological hurdles that are often self-imposed, he practices an architectural middle-way that seeks to explore the potential of every site and situation through a novel spatial expression that finds its roots in the narratives of the place both humane and historical. The architectural project seeks to extend the narratives into the ‘natural’ next chapter of their own unfolding stories through the act of designing and building. His references vary from Zen Buddhism to Western philosophy in a liberty to quote from the hybrid roots that make the Lebanese subject. The work of his studio as well as the fruit of previous collaborations has been widely published in the international press with notable acclaim and recognition both on built work and competitions.
For a Novel Architecture is his first retrospective book covering the years 2000 to 2020.

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