Beirut Design Fair | GM Architects

In September 2018, GM Architects collaborated with Beirut Design Fair, in the design of its interior exhibition space. It was an impressive 4,000m2 space, that welcomed thousands of visitors and where creatives and designers from the region and around the globe exhibited their own creations and designs.

GM Architects is a Lebanese architecture and interior design firm founded and led by Galal Mahmoud. Specialized in luxury design and often working with the biggest names of luxury hospitality; GM Architects is the only architecture and design company in the Middle East to work regularly with Accor, Rotana, Starwood, Jumeirah and Rezidor.

Beirut Design Fair was held for the second time in its history, as an important hub for multi-cultural design and innovation in the region. Bringing together emerging and established designers with industry leaders and the public, highlighting the creative power of the Lebanese capital.

In order to shed light upon the emergence of a cultural and creative boom in Beirut, GM Architects decided to pay tribute to the city, its past and its future. Recalling a pre-civil war, 1960 Golden Age, and declaring a new renaissance for the Lebanese capital as a global hotspot for rising talent and culture.

GM Architects was inspired by the “organized chaos” that so clearly defines the organic urban growth of Beirut, mixing its changing colors, proportions and styles; the architects’ goals was to create the interiors of Beirut Design Fair such as they reflect this influx of creativity and fertile ground for innovation in design.

Galal Mahmoud explained his inspiration and main theme for the exhibition space as “the layered evolution of Beirut’s urban fabric as it continuously evolves from order to disorder and vice versa...The space was organised like a city, where one tends to get lost in its play of narrow and wide streets all while having punctual high landmarks that gives a sense of direction.”

The use of shifting walls, that served to give direction to the visitors and guide them through the exhibition were also used as partition walls for the stands. The colors that were chosen were a direct reference to Beirut’s golden age, a reminder of past times marked by bright optimism for the future “as we try to get back on that right track that we were once on half a century ago” Galal Mahmoud explained.

Also based in Beirut, GM Architects, makes part of this very fabric of the city’s design and creative emergence and promising influential future in the region and internationally. The firm has recently been named as one of the top 50 architects in the region by AD Middle East.