The Cube

The Cube – a residential tower designed by Orange Architects for the Lebanese development corporation Masharii – is located on a prominently visible location on Plot 941 in Sin el Fil, an eastern district of Beirut, Lebanon.

The concept of the 50 meter high tower is simple but effective: “maximize”, making optimal use of the client’s wishes, the site’s potential, the local building code and the views on Beirut and the Mediterranean.

The rotation of the volumes on each level offers outdoor areas on the roof of the apartment below, as well as panoramic windows up to twelve meters wide.

The design with the fourteen stacked and rotated floor plans generates twenty-one apartments with fluid spaces, large balconies and wall to wall window frames.  Thanks to the fixed core with lifts and staircases at the heart of the building, there are no constraints on the layout of the apartments. The floors run straight from the core to the facades, which are on each floor composed of two supporting concrete girders and two panoramic window frames, consequently rotated 90 degrees per level. Both the crossing girders and the core serve to stabilize the tower, an extra challenging task in a seismologically active area. The white coated girder walls, which are perforated, strongly determine the appearance of both the exterior and the interior of the building. The parking garage is located underground in three layers and partly set into the adjacent hill. On the ground floor the recessed space for the lobby is covered by a spectacular cantilevering volume, creating a nicely covered place and marking the generous entrance of the Cube.

The Cube, Beirut, Lebabon
Program: residential building
Architects: Orange Architects
Team: Michiel Hofman, Patrick Meijers, Jeroen Schipper
Client: Masharii SAL, Karim Jabbour
Structural: Rodolphe Mattar
Contractor: K.Abboud
Quality control: Apave
Technical drawings: CBA Group
Area: 5,600 sqm
Completion: 2015