2024-10-15
7 分钟Every week we welcome one of the jury chairs of the Holcim Foundation Awards – the world’s premier competition for sustainable design – to hear their views on creating uplifting places, fostering a healthy planet and building thriving communities. In episode two we sit down with Lebanese-born architect Lina Ghotmeh, the founding principal of her eponymously named practice. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome to the second in a special series of tall stories brought to you by the Wholesome Foundation Awards, the world's premier competition for sustainable design, highlighting projects that contribute to the transformation of the building sector.
I'm your host, Andrew Tucker.
In each episode, we welcome one of the jury chairs to explore their views on creating uplifting places, fostering a healthy planet, developing viable economics and building thriving communities.
We ask them how their careers began, the pillars of their practice, and what their hopes are for the future of the industry.
This week we speak with a Lebanese born architect and founding principal of our eponymous practice, Lena Gotme.
You know, I grew up in Beirut.
I was born in the 80s.
Beirut during that time was finishing up actually a period of war and recovering from it.
And growing up in such a city, architecture meant a lot for me.
It meant possibility of healing a landscape, a possibility of bringing people together.
So growing in a city that is almost like an open section, I was drawn to that landscape that was in ruins and thinking, how can we build?
What tool do I have as a human being to allow beauty to be brought back in a landscape?
So basically I was interested in architecture.
I was very sensitive in drawing.
I spent a lot of my time actually in childhood drawing.
And at the same time I was interested in archaeology because the city of Beirut and Lebanon has been part of a long civilization.
We find traces of Phoenicians, of Ottomans, of Romans, and every time you dig in, you find again another archaeology.
So it's also a field that was interesting for me.
So bringing both together, somehow I came to become an architect who's very interested in traces of the past, of civilization, and of the complexity of our culture as human beings.
Since my school years, I always felt like architecture is a research driven practice.