The fruit of 12 years of planning, during which time the project evolved significantly from its initial phase, Saifi 178 marks the completion of the Saifi Village project, a mixed-use residential and commercial district at the north-eastern corner of Martyr’s Square. One of the city’s higher-end neighborhoods, it has morphed over the years into Central Beirut’s arts district.
The project is for a cluster of small buildings, arranged around a landscaped courtyard that snakes between them, that serves both as a relaxation area for residents and as a garden passageway helping reweave the disrupted urban fabric by linking the busy ring road bounding one end of the project with the rest of the city. Part of the passageway will be a sculpture garden, an outdoor exhibition space to display archaeological artifacts unearthed during construction on the site.
Of the five buildings that comprise the cluster, four are blocks of low-rise housing – which contain a mix of double-height, flexible orientation apartments and open-plan loft spaces. The fifth, which links the upper ring neighborhood to the lower Saifi arts district with a two storey structure at its base, houses on the upper floors an office building that will be the landmark of the Saifi District, with its triangular fin louvers and urban windows, creating the project’s suspended gardens.
