Karim Nader

February 22, 2017	ARCHIDES Lecture Series: “Creative Processes”
	Karim Nader is an architect, teacher and yogi. He has graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from the American University of Beirut in 1999 where has been the first prize winner of the Azar Award as well as the third prize winner of the Aareen Award for excellency in architecture. In 2003, he received his Master of Architecture from Rice University in Houston. Since 2000, he has been continuously teaching at the American University of Beirut, also from 2014 until 2016 at the Lebanese American University. His interests include architectural representation and process and always emphasize the role of the designer as a passionate, engaged and responsible individual. From foundation to final project, he has conducted numerous design studios, experimental electives, notably, the “Manifesto”, a spiritual and creative workshop that concluded yearly in awaited theatrical representations. Professionally, after independent beginnings, he has collaborated from 2008 until 2016 with Patrick Mezher and Walid Ghantous as BLANKPAGE Architects. El Khalil Beach House, (Villa Kali) delivered just on time for the summer of 2016, is a major 2,000sqm, 11 bedroom seaside mansion, designed as a full commission from the architectural scale to interior and furniture design and selection. It is a four year effort that has involved collaborations with numerous designers and contractors that truly inspired the renewal of the possibility of architecture as a total work of art. In 2016, he founds his independent practice, Karim Nader Studio, a bespoke firm, “from the landscape to the doorknob.”
Beyond the Seen (2.0)	Abstract: “Where do ideas come from? Delving into the oneiric space of my own imagination, I would like to present a cinematic, non-linear, non-chronological sequence of images and texts. Photographs from four built residences; the space of intimacy, personal struggle, family gathering, homeliness and its opposite, find themselves juxtaposed with ‘non-realistic’ images of a visionary proposal for the unbuilt Beirut cineplex. Organized by the sheer nature of their felt identities, the images appear in an order that is dictated by connections that are sometimes visual, but more often by inner narratives that are quite often impossible to communicate to the end user. Yet this is an attempt at expressing that inner language of inspiration that appears at the edge between dream and reality that split moment when the spark of an idea emerges. Indeed, the novels I read, the songs I heard, the fleeting moments that I have encountered on the highway have all left a certain mark. The “grey” in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Reprise, embodies the perfect atmosphere of an in-between space where the narrator was neither him nor someone else, but rather a pure consciousness of the lived present moment, beyond this or that. This process will remain impossible to conceptualize into a packaged statement. Therefore this presentation will present no theory nor any final resolution of the problem at hand. It will only try, once more, through image, written and spoken text, to embody the space of this unnamable experience. ”(K. Nader, 2017).

February 22, 2017

ARCHIDES Lecture Series: “Creative Processes”

Karim Nader is an architect, teacher and yogi.
He has graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from the American University of Beirut in 1999 where has been the first prize winner of the Azar Award as well as the third prize winner of the Aareen Award for excellency in architecture. In 2003, he received his Master of Architecture from Rice University in Houston. Since 2000, he has been continuously teaching at the American University of Beirut, also from 2014 until 2016 at the Lebanese American University. His interests include architectural representation and process and always emphasize the role of the designer as a passionate, engaged and responsible individual. From foundation to final project, he has conducted numerous design studios, experimental electives, notably, the “Manifesto”, a spiritual and creative workshop that concluded yearly in awaited theatrical representations.
Professionally, after independent beginnings, he has collaborated from 2008 until 2016 with Patrick Mezher and Walid Ghantous as BLANKPAGE Architects. El Khalil Beach House, (Villa Kali) delivered just on time for the summer of 2016, is a major 2,000sqm, 11 bedroom seaside mansion, designed as a full commission from the architectural scale to interior and furniture design and selection. It is a four year effort that has involved collaborations with numerous designers and contractors that truly inspired the renewal of the possibility of architecture as a total work of art.
In 2016, he founds his independent practice, Karim Nader Studio, a bespoke firm, “from the landscape to the doorknob.”

Beyond the Seen (2.0)

Abstract:

“Where do ideas come from?
Delving into the oneiric space of my own imagination, I would like to present a cinematic, non-linear, non-chronological sequence of images and texts. Photographs from four built residences; the space of intimacy, personal struggle, family gathering, homeliness and its opposite, find themselves juxtaposed with ‘non-realistic’ images of a visionary proposal for the unbuilt Beirut cineplex.
Organized by the sheer nature of their felt identities, the images appear in an order that is dictated by connections that are sometimes visual, but more often by inner narratives that are quite often impossible to communicate to the end user. Yet this is an attempt at expressing that inner language of inspiration that appears at the edge between dream and reality that split moment when the spark of an idea emerges.
Indeed, the novels I read, the songs I heard, the fleeting moments that I have encountered on the highway have all left a certain mark. The “grey” in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Reprise, embodies the perfect atmosphere of an in-between space where the narrator was neither him nor someone else, but rather a pure consciousness of the lived present moment, beyond this or that.
This process will remain impossible to conceptualize into a packaged statement. Therefore this presentation will present no theory nor any final resolution of the problem at hand. It will only try, once more, through image, written and spoken text, to embody the space of this unnamable experience. ”(K. Nader, 2017).