Push a wall, make rooms appear or disappear
Unique open-concept units in Beirut Modulofts are endlessly adaptable
The aim was to build the best of two worlds in designing the stunning, innovative Modulofts in Beirut, Lebanon. Faoud Samara Architects wanted to combine the purity of the traditional Lebanese home, or beit, with the abundant light and airy space of ’70sstyle Manhattan lofts — while also offering maximum flexibility to residents.
Modulofts — a14-storey building with seven duplex lofts built atop a first storey that is raised and supported by columns — was created with sliding walls in each unit.
The walls slide from inside to out, allowing residents to instantly create rooms or push the walls out to open the space in their suites.
Traditional Lebanese homes have a central hall with an entrance at one end and balcony or terrace at the other, with rooms for living and sleeping opening onto the hallway. Modulofts follows the same design pattern with each of the seven, vertically-stacked lofts constructed with a central, doubleheight main space — the living/ dining room area — with two rooms at the lower level and another two linked by a slender bridge at the upper level.
Modulofts, completed in 2017, cost approximately $3.2 million and took seven years to design and build. Fouad Samara, Fouad Samara Architects, answers a few questions about Modulofts. What were your biggest challenges?
The only real challenge was in the engineering of the 28 outwardly sliding walls. While we wanted them to be as economical, low-tech and elegant as possible, we didn’t take the engineering of this unique and bespoke building component lightly.
The walls, designed to take150 km/h winds, have three safety features each and remain relatively easy to operate manually by one person. How do the sliding walls transform the living spaces?
The outwardly sliding walls introduce a layer of flexibility in transforming internal spaces and creating unpredictable configurations to the facade. Each of the units has 16 different ways to spatially personalize and “tune” a residence according to one’s lifestyle and needs.
Mix and match any of the four options for the lower floor with any four for the upper while having the ability to “re-tune” the loft accordingly if those needs changes.
Units can be tuned to have three cellular bedrooms and a cellular kitchen, which would constitute a traditional duplex apartment. Or one can open up the four single-height rooms into the double-height space for the perfect bachelor pad or (for a) young couple. Explain the engineering. The sliding walls have a steel structure and are top-hung along an I-beam fixed to the reinforced concrete ceiling. They have aluminum panels on either side, with insulation sandwiched within to improve the wall’s acoustic performance when they’re moved inside.
In addition to two other safety features built into the system, the steel corbels have blinkers on all sides as a third safety feature to trap the wall in. The walls manually slide along the protruding black steel corbels and are light enough for operation by a one person.
What configurations have residents created?
Loft 1 has been our office space since the building was complete, and we change our office’s configuration daily during the lunch break when one of the rooms on the lower level — usually open all day for staff meetings — gets closed off.
The six other lofts within the building are all residential and occupants change them regularly. One of the lofts is occupied by a bachelor who has only his bedroom closed off with the three other rooms open to the double height spaces. When he has visitors stay for a few days, two of the other rooms get closed off, and reopened when he’s on his own again. Interview has been edited and condensed.