BERNARD KHOURY. IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

Trailer

Vernissage

VERNISSAGE
Thursday, October 20, 2016
6.30 pm
FREE ENTRY

EXHIBITION
October 20 – December 2, 2016

Opening:
Thursday – Friday 4 – 7 pm with guided tour by floornature.com editors.
To make an appointment for a tour outside these hours: Paolo Schianchi paolo@floornature.com  (groups of at least 5)

SpazioFMG inaugurates an important new monographic exhibition about a great contemporary architect in October. October 20 through December 2, 2016 Iris Ceramica and FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti’s exhibition space illustrates the theoretical research and built projects of Lebanon’s most brilliant and visionary architect, Bernard Khoury.

Bernard Khoury. In order of appearance, a new exhibition about the great Lebanese architect’s career curated by Khoury himself with Luca Molinari, in collaboration with Alessandro Benetti and Danielle Makhoul, opens at 6:30 on October 20.

Bernard Khoury. In order of appearance, is a story told through drawings, photographs and words describing the artistic vision of Lebanon’s most visionary and unpredictable architect. Khoury was born and grew up in Beirut, a place with a complex history at a crossroads of different cultural and religious traditions, and developed a highly personal aesthetic unlike anything in the contemporary architecture scene, expressed in his career as an architect, curator and author.

The buildings designed by Bernard Khoury / DW5, the studio he founded in Beirut in 1993, are among the most spectacular landmarks in the city that has been under constant convalescence. The underground nightclub B 018 (1998) celebrates the unbridled hedonism of Lebanese nightlife with its roof that slides open onto the starry sky; the antennae lighting up the pool terrace on the N.B.K. Residence (2013) shine like beacons along the Beirut skyline; and the recent Plot #4371 (2015), concentrates 29 apartment/studios for the capital’s new creative élite around a gigantic round freight lift measuring 30 square metres.

To present this unique figure to the public, SpazioFMG and Bernard Khoury together selected more than 100 drawings, visions and photographs in which real and imaginary buildings and spaces in the city overlap, dialogue and blend together. The exhibition also engages the visitor with 16 stories told by “Talking Objects” suspended here and there in the gallery, from which Bernard Khoury’s own voice can be heard.

Bernard Khoury. In order of appearance, open until Friday, December 2, 2016, introduced by Luca Molinari, SpazioFMG per l’Architettura scientific expert and curator:

“Bernard Khoury is one of the greatest talents in architecture today. Lebanese, he grew up in a family of architects, was educated in North America, studied at Harvard, and now runs a prominent architectural studio in Beirut. His early works, a series of nightclubs with a ruthless metropolitan look constructed in the tortuous alleyways of a city destroyed by endless war, shocked critics with that blend of irony and formal control that only the purely creative dare to attempt.
Beirut has been Khoury’s workshop and source of inspiration since the start of the century. A pleasure-loving, sophisticated, cosmopolitan metropolis that has been raped and abused, the capital of Lebanon is now fertile ground for the study and production of some of the most avant-garde art, architecture and design in the Mediterranean.
In recent years Khoury has been investigating residential constructions, designing a series of tower blocks that seem to challenge the laws of the market: all-black, metallic, with only a few details studied with all the care of car design, lodgings boldly built on lots that are all but impossible to build on. The result is always the same: his projects are sold out, to a new urban middle class that sees itself reflected in architecture with an uncompromising personality. Khoury’s work is a continual challenge to tired old marketing and to the stereotypes that mortify all forms of research. SpazioFMG is proud to host an original exhibition about the work of this great master of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern architecture.”

Photo Credits: Sara Busiol