Souks Entertainment Center – Annabel Karim Kassar

₁₃ Souks Entertainment Center, Beirut Lebanon, 2013 Architecture

Reconversion Music Lounge

25,000 M2

Complete

The Entertainment Center of Beirut is located along Allenby Street on the east Side and Fakhry Bey Street on the west side, in the northern part of the old souks of Beirut that were rebuilt and redesigned by Raphael Moneo in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war.

The program consists of fourteen movie theatres, food courts, retail spaces, offices and a mega store.

The first horizontal deck preserves the commercial content in terms of retail stores in continuity with the boutiques of Allenby Street: it is made of lime stone similar to the ones used for the old existing buildings of the French mandate period. This lime stone base includes as well 10 theaters of medium size.

On the upper part of the project, gold metal ribbons wrap the four big movie theaters generating a dynamic form. The four theaters, grouped in pairs, intersect forming a main lobby. The latter is glazed on its east and west façades allowing visual continuation with Fakhry Beik Street.

In order to emphasize the iconic image of the project, the building was conceived as a light transmitter. CAI Light, Annabel Karim Kassar’s sister company, transformed the façade into a luminous animated screen by assembling five thousand LED polycarbonate lighting modules. These modules, designed by CAI Light, create a geometric contemporary bas-relief: an e-cladding where light becomes video.

PRESS

Initiated by the Lebanese company for the development and reconstruction of Beirut Central District (Solidere), the renovation of the city’s icon souks heavily damaged during the Civil War, involves the construction of shopping and leisure sites.