Detail of the project ed. 2020

MAROUN LAHOUD – SAINT ELIE CHURCH

Design­er	Maroun Lahoud
Loca­tion	Brih Chouf Lebanon
Design Team	Maroun Lahoud Salam Geha Dany Ajouz
Year	2016
Pho­to credits	Maroun Lahoud

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

St-Elie project is locat­ed in Mtaile Brih, mean­ing panoram­ic in Ara­bic, 50km from Beirut, a region char­ac­ter­ized by its ter­raced topog­ra­phy and veg­e­ta­tion abun­dance. It is also a region with a heavy his­tor­i­cal her­itage, which led to vio­lent clash­es dur­ing the civ­il war between 1975 and 1990, result­ing in the near-total destruc­tion of hous­es, places of wor­ship and the dis­place­ment of vil­lagers. St-Elie is the first project sym­bol­iz­ing the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the region.
The project arose with the will to gath­er by cel­e­brat­ing the ele­ments of nature. It com­pris­es the church and its square, all dressed in white, solemn­ly set­ting on a dry stone walled base, that remod­els the topog­ra­phy of the hill­side to house the mul­ti­pur­pose hall and its annexes.

Radi­ant with its white bush ham­mered stone cladding, the church inspires renew­al. Its aspect embod­ies the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Maronite Church: pure mass­ing and flat roof. With a square base of 17x17m, St-Elie can gath­er up to 250 peo­ple. The sac­risty and the con­fes­sion­al are locat­ed at the back to clear as much as pos­si­ble the altar.
The posi­tion­ing of the stones rang­ing from 25 to 45cm in height and dis­posed in a ran­dom man­ner uni­fies the enve­lope. With the same ges­ture, the bell tow­er was erect­ed to cre­ate the entrance of the church; the thick­ness of this entrance fil­ters the pas­sage from the pro­fane world to the sacred world. 

From the entrance we are drawn to an impos­ing slit that draws a cross; ori­ent­ed north, it avoids any unwant­ed back­light­ing effect dur­ing mass. In this nat­ur­al light box, white walls seem to dif­fuse light, the Car­rara mar­ble floor­ing, with its milky, pro­found and liv­ing appear­ance, reflect­ing it in turn.
The inte­ri­or is craft­ed and hier­ar­chized by indi­rect light­ing schemes that define its spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion: zenithal light­ing above the altar, sac­risty and con­fes­sion­al, pari­etal along the lat­er­al cir­cu­la­tions, and dis­creet at the back.
The litur­gi­cal codes are expressed by the num­ber of open­ings. Three light nich­es along the lat­er­al cir­cu­la­tions refer to the Trin­i­ty; dis­posed on both sides, with two open­ings each, they total­ize to 12 open­ings, refer­ring to the way of the cross.

A new page is writ­ten, how­ev­er it is root­ed in the con­text by the use of local stones.
The vil­lagers helped build the base by bring­ing what was left from their demol­ished hous­es and church­es; the rest extract­ed from the site by local artisans.

The 500 m² mul­ti­pur­pose hall is nat­u­ral­ly lit by five large bays, open­ing to the court­yards and the land­scape, and is served by sev­er­al annex­es glid­ing in the inter­stices of the structure.
Due to its loca­tion and the con­trast of its mate­ri­als, the project tends to cre­ate a new focal point in the Shouf’s val­ley of Gold and writes a new page in the his­to­ry of Mount Lebanon by hon­or­ing its heritage.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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