Andrew Ayers: You just came back from Japan, where you designed the Bahraini Pavilion for Expo 2025 in Osaka. What was that like?

Lina Ghotmeh: Japan is always a great experience. I think many of the architects who designed pavilions for the exhibition were frustrated, because the construction company didn’t want to engage with their ideas and obliged them to build with prefabricated boxes that they then covered with other materials. We tried to find a way of echoing Japanese traditions, rather than trying to impose something they wouldn’t really be excited to build. The whole project was made from very long timber elements, so it was all about working with wood, which is something the Japanese master, and challenging them on that. It was great fun. We found a local contractor who’d never worked with foreigners before, but who really identified with the design and was proud to be part of the project. I think this is so important. For me, it’s really nice when you work with local knowhow and try to push it. Like Stone Garden in Beirut, where were invented the local way of plastering buildings with the gesture of the hand, seeking to engage the makers in the design process of the building.

Is it possible to achieve this level of local engagement with every project?

With most of them, yes.

Your design for the Hermès leather workshop in Normandy features a building envelope in brick, a material that is part of the traditional construction culture there.

Yes, and once again it’s also about the hand and craft. At Hermès’s request, we created a low-carbon, energy-positive building, so there was also the question of the environment, which is about people, nature, resources, and having a positive impact, both ecologically and socially. When you’re trying to do that, the first question you ask is, “What should we build with?” We discovered that there was a tradition of straw construction in Normandy, as well as brickmaking. Straw turned out to be impractical for a workshop, because it needs a lot of maintenance, so brick became the obvious choice. It was a whole adventure, having the bricks made by hand and training the artisans to work with them. I remember going on site at the beginning and finding the bricks strewn all over the place, in utter chaos. I told the contractors, “You have to love the bricks, love the material.” It was really magical how, a little while after, the whole construction team appropriated the process and got everything organized. I also asked them to do the color panache, which was very complex, since there were red, dark-red, and violet bricks. I didn’t draw the composition, I wanted them to understand how to mix the colors. They were so proud showing me what they’d done. It’s really about changing mindsets, and about why it’s important to build things in a good way.

What other local craft adventures do you have coming up?

I’m currently working on the Qatari Pavilion in Venice, a permanent structure in the Giardini, and I’m looking forward to pushing the boundaries of Italian craft. It’ll be in stone, and we’re hoping to use artisanal glass too. I’ve been looking into stone production, and I’ve discovered that 30 to 40 percent of what’s extracted is considered waste because the stones are deemed imperfect. Visiting a Portuguese quarry, I saw this whole graveyard of supposedly unusable stones. So there’s the question of how you might put that material back into the industry. I mean first, you have to accept the imperfections, which I personally don’t think are imperfections, because it’s really about understanding the true nature of stone and shifting our perspective on beauty and the immaculate. I touched on the theme with my Harvard students last year in a studio program I put together about elderly living. I wanted to challenge questions of beauty and ageing, and the way we sideline both resources and age groups when we conceive cities. It was very instructive to put the two in parallel.

Are there materials that should be avoided?

I’m never categorical about it — it always depends on context. Stone Garden is in concrete, because it’s the material that’s available in Lebanon, it’s what they know how to do, and it’s a seismic region, so you have to build robustly.

Which you did, since your building survived the August 2020 Beirut port explosion?

Thankfully! So you use concrete for robustness, but also to achieve enough thermal mass to reduce your reliance on air conditioning. It requires holistic thinking every time. If you say, “Let’s use wood,” but then you source your timber from another corner of the planet, it doesn’t make sense. If I’m working in Japan, it’s logical to use timber because they know how to master wood, it’s a local material. Moreover, the Osaka pavilion can be disassembled, and the timber, which is not engineered, will go back into circulation.

What about a project like the British Museum, which is a very different exercise.

The challenge there is to talk about an institution that’s a museum of the world, with collections that come from everywhere. It’s about narrating the story of the collection, allowing the museum to become a place of conversation, and at the same time opening up the building, because it expanded over time and lost its architectural essence — it’s really suffocating as a space. So we’re working on the spatiality, creating double-height galleries, bringing back courtyards that had been filled up, letting the sky in, creating better-quality, extraordinary spaces. There’s also the idea of building with the demolition material from the overhaul, the spolia, reusing that in a way that incorporates traces of previous states

So the British Museum becomes its own site of archaeology?

Exactly! I think archaeology is a super-important subject because it’s a question of both the collection but also the archaeologists who contributed to that collection. Who were they? That’s something we want to foreground. And archaeological investigations are still ongoing at some of the sites, which feeds our understanding of the collections, so this notion of digging and constant making is essential. The first phase of the British Museum project involves looking at the whole Western Range and seeing what the possibilities are, what additions and subtractions we have to make — creating breathing spaces and then seeing if you need to add anything. The second phase involves creating galleries that act as vessels for the collections in such a way that visitors will understand them better; the space must become an aid for plunging into that history and engaging with the different civilizations. You know, the history of the British Museum’s collections really connects us as people. It helps us to understand conflicts of the past that then become very important in thinking about resolving conflicts of today, or avoiding them — trying to break the cycle.

How will you tackle the museum’s controversial Parthenon marbles?

I’m an architect, not a politician. Obviously I have to deal with the objects that are in the museum’s collections. For me, it’s not about making them an integral part of the architecture but showing them in a way where they’re detached from the architecture, so the space could function with or without those objects. For example, look at the lamassu, the winged creatures you find at the entrances to Assyrian palaces — in museums today, you see them embedded in the architecture, with reconstructed gates and walls. We’re questioning that by using something more akin to a scaffold, which suggests the original structure without embedding the lamassu. It can also be used to display objects and information that tell the story of these gatekeepers, and explain how they found their way to the British Museum. We’re really trying to create spaces that engage conversation and allow dialogue around difficult subjects, including current affairs. I think that’s the major interest of a museum today — a place where you create culture and common ground.

On the subject of current affairs, how are you coping with the situation in Lebanon? Your family is still there?

Yes, they’re still there. Do you know why I wanted to be an architect? Because I grew up in Lebanon during the war, during all that instability, and for me architecture was a way of bringing people together, of reconnecting with nature and beauty, and of believing that maybe through architecture and beauty you can make places that allow us to be together, that discourage violence. So I continue to do that! [Laughs.] I’m more committed than ever.

Am I right in thinking that you wanted to be an archaeologist as a child?

Yes. I was interested in archaeology because in Beirut, after the war, there were all these digs, archaeology was constantly emerging right there in front of you. You saw all the layers of civilization, and how architecture and the urban landscape become earth again. I was fascinated by that process of searching and of trying to build truth out of the traces, since there’s never one single truth. I perceive architecture in a similar way: it’s always about looking at a place, connecting the traces, connecting what exists, building a memory, building a relationship to the ground, and allowing for the built landscape to become earth once more at some point. You have to keep a sense of humility, since one day it’ll all be dust again.

And what made architecture win out over archaeology?

The fact that architecture is forward-looking. I mean it connects to the past, but there’s a sense of newness and of dreaming the future. My mother was also studying architecture when I was a kid, so I saw her making models and plans. I spent a lot of time drawing as a child. First I wanted to be an archaeologist, then a doctor, and then I started architecture but also did an elective in biology. For me biology and architecture link up through the question of the body. I was also able to take classes in politics, anthropology, and sociology, all of which seemed essential to me, since architecture lies at the crossroads of these different disciplines.

How did you end up in Paris?

It was an accident that became a choice. Destiny brought me here when Jean Nouvel called me to work on his Beirut project — I’d already done an internship with him, so we had a good relationship. After the Foster’s collaboration in London, it made sense to come back here, since my projects were in Europe. I also love the relationship to history and to humanity that is embodied in a country like France and in a city like Paris. I hope it’s something that will remain an essential part of the DNA here. My high school in Beirut was a French lycée, so of course I spoke French and had been taught the history of France. But English also played a major role, because I studied at the American University of Beirut. You know, you’re a product of all that geopolitical history, which is something I’m very aware of.

What’s your home like in Paris?

My office is my domestic space.

Really? You live in your office?

Almost! I only sleep at home. Honestly, I spend most of my time here. I live very close, so it’s easy to come here on weekends or whatever. Right now we’re expanding into a second space across the street, which we’re renovating. It'll be like a satellite for making models and to have more room.

Have you designed any private houses yet?

No, but I’d like to.

Would you ever build one for yourself?

Totally! My apartment here contains objects and things from my world, but I didn’t design it. If I built a house, it would be in a natural setting, that’s for sure. A very small place, but with a strong connection to the landscape.`

And what about Stone Garden? What are the domestic arrangements there?

The project was intended as a critique of residential buildings in Beirut, which always have the same plan, with the entrance hall followed by the living room and a lot of parts you don’t use — wasted space, essentially. It replicates a social construct. With Stone Garden, I wanted to create the possibility for individual appropriation, using devices like bay windows and other kinds of openings, as well as spaces whose uses were undefined. The idea was that every apartment could be occupied in a different manner, allowing for a variety of lifestyles and maybe even new ways of living.

So this is a whole exercise in domesticity in one building.

Totally. I spent a lot of time drawing those plans and imagining how people might appropriate those spaces. Often the reality surprised me — you know, like I would have imagined some spaces as a bedroom, but the occupants used them as a living room. Stone Garden is fun, it’s spatially richer than typical housing. [Lina shows me some photos.] This window gives onto the city — it looks like a painting. The whole idea of the windows was to frame Beirut like a photograph inside the building, making the city part of the domestic realm.

It’s extraordinary how different Stone Garden appears inside compared to outside. You’ve got this very textured, rather fortress-like exterior, but inside everything is very smooth, and the building appears so transparent it’s like you’re floating in the sky.

Yes, it’s about feeling protected, creating a sense of intimacy, and yet also bringing in light and space. [Lina shows me pictures of Stone Garden after the Beirut port explosion.] I was in Lebanon when it exploded, I went over to Stone Garden just the next day. It was really crazy. That’s domesticity in Beirut: you never have a stable environment. The inside was completely shattered but the outside remained intact. Some of the occupants were at home when the blast occurred. Nobody was hurt thank goodness. Since the façade isn’t all in glass, they could find spots where they were protected.

It looks like the war all over again, which makes me think of what you said about how Beirut is one big archaeological dig. Is there a link between the palimpsest of Beirut and your idea of “archaeology of the future”?

Yes, obviously it links back to my fascination with archaeology when I was growing up, but also to how I tackled projects when I was studying architecture. For me, each new assignment was like a detective story. You did a lot of research, and built up a whole body of knowledge that helped you relate different aspects of the project to each other, almost like building the memory of the project. It’s something I’ve continued to do in practice. When you think about architecture as a way to connect to the past and to the environment at large, the idea of archaeology comes in because you’re digging, you’re researching, you’re connecting to the materials of a place. But architecture also projects us into the future, so it becomes an archaeology of the future. It’s an ethos of process, of making and thinking about architecture, an appreciation of tradition and history, of anchoring ourselves into what went before, of understanding our ancestors, including Indigenous knowledge.

Right now we’re sitting in an office full of models and moodboards from past and current projects — there’s almost an archaeology of your own practice going on here. Is that Lina Ghotmeh’s domesticity — she lives in an archive?

[Laughs.] It’s like an open archive in the office, though “archive” suggests something dead, whereas for me it’s full of spirits that are alive. All the material surrounding us here tells stories. I think I live with stories — material stories that talk about human environments and that constantly solicit your senses. For me, it’s important not to be in a pristine environment, but one that’s organized and that engages you. You know, each new project is not a separate story — they’re interrelated, one feeds into another in terms of research and thinking.

Your 2023 Serpentine Pavilion, the model of which I can see over there, was another project that involved a certain idea of domesticity. You even titled it À Table, since you imagined it as a place where people would sit down and eat together.

Absolutely. I think that domesticity is actually very present in all my projects, because I always seek a form of intimacy. It’s clearly something I interiorized and that now expresses itself. For example, the restaurant we did at the Palais de Tokyo, Les Grands Verres, was all about that idea of intimacy, expressed through space, materials, even the chairs we designed. It’s about welcome. The materiality of hospitality is so important to me — it’s part of my culture. And hospitality is so important in architecture in general, bringing a generosity to the volumes, using different scales for different functions, ensuring a building welcomes you through its spatiality and its tactility. It’s something I aim for in every project.