Atlas Concorde launches its talk series 'Around Design' in Dubai featuring East Architecture Studio

In partnership: Ceramic tile brand Atlas Concorde has launched its global talks series, Around Design: Meet, Talk, Connect, in Dubai, in collaboration with identity, bringing Beirut-based architecture practice, East Architecture Studio to deliver its first presentation.

The talk, entitled ‘The Niemeyer Guest House Renovation: A tale of architecture’s capacity for repair’ looked at the history of the late Brazilian modernist architect, Oscar Niemeyer’s Rachid Karami International Fair in Tripoli and how their project – which won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2022 – drew inspiration from the existing typology.

Led by architects Nicolas Fayad and Charles Kettaneh, the project was commissioned for Mijara – an initiative that is working to reinvigorate Tripoli’s declining wood industry by providing a platform for carpenters to meet, share, learn skills and access tools and materials, and to meet designers.

“Our intervention’s main principle stays true to the building’s integral architectural qualities, materiality and imagined past,” the architects explain. “We’ve asked ourselves how Oscar Niemeyer would have completed the structure, by researching similar projects and architectural conditions within his body of work that might recall the Guest House’s initial design intent.”

Around Design is part of the brand’s mission to create dialogue between the design industry and to learn about the wide-ranging approaches to solving interior and architectural challenges through inspiring projects.

The event took place at Atlas Concorde’s Dubai showroom in Dubai Design District, bringing together designers and architects from the local design community.