"We can’t breathe under water...but we can generate an Amphibian".
This was the title I choose for a passive and Low Energy Building in Beirut Central District. As an Architecture undergraduate student, I found it relevant now to participate in an international competition although knowing in advance that I might not get a chance having competitors from all over the world( Italy, London, US...to name some). The sole aim was to break the wall of Platonism and Cartesian Euclideanism in Forms and Form generation process even if this means designing a passive and sustainable and low energy building and even within strict building rules and regulations emposed on the competitors by Solidere( the constrcution company behind reconstructing beirut).
So being an architecture maniac, my proposal was to build an amphibian, a building that lives both inside and outside water( outside water as is the case of all buildings, and inside water due to the fact that beirut is a costal city always suceptible to heavy rains).
Now consider an amphibian, a smooth-skinned vertebrate, such as a frog or salamander, that characteristically hatches as an aquatic larva with gills. The larva then transforms into an adult having air-breathing lungs. We could, implementing high-end computer aided design and animation software, to not only design but also generate a Residential Amphibian; a building capable of literally breathing in summer and warming itself in winter adapting to the Lebanese ecological and environmental surrounding; hence maintaining a bottom-up approach in energy responsive architectural design.
