The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is pleased to announce that the 2021-22 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design is Paris-based, Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh. This is her first of two public lectures and will include a conversation with Dean Juan Du.

Lina Ghotmeh’s work develops from thorough historical research, emerging as exquisite interventions that enliven memories and senses. Her design methodology, an “archeology of the future,” is a true philosophy towards the built landscape. Drawn from the traces of their place, architectures arise from listening closely to their context. As they establish a new “déjà-là,” designs initiate a dialogue where time, memory, space, nature and humanity live as a symbiotic whole. Past meets future as histories are unearthed and memories excavated to raise questions enabling more sustainable and just architecture. The practice emphasizes the work of the hand and artisanship, allowing the built environment to embrace the traditions of its localities. As so, they uplift the subjective experience and the collective memory of those it recalls, while simultaneously crafting an ecological dialogue with earth.

Projects such as the Estonian National Museum find context in difficult pasts, listening to ancestors to project their voices towards better futures. Likewise, Stone Garden in Beirut anchors the city’s past into the present by calling forward its ruins, histories of conflicts and ongoing challenges; home to inhabitants and to the Mina Gallery, it emerges with an Earth-like envelope hand-chiseled by artisans. Other works include Réalimenter Masséna, a passive wooden tower dedicated to sustainable feeding responding to Paris’ call for innovative projects; Les Grands Verres, Palais de Tokyo’s Parisian restaurant conceived with reused, bio-sourced materials; and the new Hermès Manufacture, a handmade brick-constructed, low-carbon, passive building emerging soon in the heart of Normandy.

In the epoch of the Anthropocene, the urgency of building better futures becomes louder. From circular economies to energetic autonomies, the mission of architecture is to achieve a future of symbiosis where everything is a resource: nothing and no one is forgotten while living in a memorable and sustainable world that includes everybody.