For a Novel Architecture

Told in the form of a cine-novel, this document compiles 20 years of Karim Nader architectural practice and research. Thirty-two projects from Karim Nader current studio and collaborations with Blankpage, Roula, Assaf, Danny Khoury and others are here presented in an order of thematic correspondences resembling more a screenplay than a classic architectural monograph. Re-written for this edition, the text reconnects all projects in one continuous narrative flow supporting the sequence of photographic moments, a medium here used exclusively in the absence of all other traditional modes of architectural representation. Some half of the projects actualise the successes of buildings completed and happily inhabited, the other remains future potential or aborted attempts now lost forever: the eternal story of the architectural adventure, the challenge of its uncertain path, its temporary pleasures and recurring wonders, its unfulfilled promises and unexpected successes. The use of the word 'novel', it is not to equate the art of architecture to the art of literature, but rather to insist on the importance of continuously looking at the lived experience of architecture in space and time as its core value (like in a novel), and the requirement for any art to always be new beyond the romantic nostalgia of a lost past or the fetishistic (quite often technological) celebration of the unknown future (the novel as in the new). All in all, it is once again the necessity to live poetically, humanely and naturally that this document attempts to manifest through Karim Nader's relentless passion for the architectural practice and the sentimental relationship with every site, every client, in every situation.