Khalil Khouri, Modernism, and the Arab World: In Conversation with Bernard Khoury

He decides to decrease his focus on new buildings, choosing to only work for close friends or for himself as a developer, an unusual position for somebody with a social-oriented background. His focus turns to furniture design, creating modern pieces that are locally conceived and locally manufactured, thus making them affordable to the Lebanese public. Continuing his “almost naïve belief in modernity” and technological progress, he begins to design not only the furniture pieces but also the facilities and even the machines to create them, eventually becoming a successful industrialist.

Khalil Khouri is extremely difficult to frame, he’s someone who is basically a self-made man, who had a brilliant career as an architect, but also simultaneously became a successful industrialist and a developer, and ended his life with a spectacular financial bankruptcy and lost everything. I’d say the ups and downs are also very tied to the territory, in the sense that it’s a very specific modern project that you can read through this adventure, one that you cannot compare to your typical architect career in Europe or in the Western world, even the very successful ones. It was very very different here. – Bernard Khoury

This is the context in which the Interdesgn building took shape. It was conceived by Khalil Khouri in 1973 at the peak of his industrial success, was intended as a luxurious showroom for his locally manufactured furniture. Construction began in 1974 but was halted due to the onset of the civil war. By the 1990s, with Lebanon’s economy shifting from production to finance, the building’s location became unsuitable for a showroom. Despite financial struggles, Khalil Khouri completed the building, yet it was never used for its initial purpose. Seized by the bakes soon after completion, it was deemed unusable, so left abandoned for for 20 years. Now, on the occasion of the exhibition, Bernard and Teymour Khoury reopened the building for 4 days, finally allowing the people of Beirut to explore the mysterious brutalist structure they were passing by each day.

You will see the Modern architecture of the period, in this part of the world, you will see a very clear correlation between the bankruptcy of the nation-state project and the Modern movement and the Modernist ideas and moralism in general. It’s a very serious decline that you can read in the façade of buildings. – Bernard Khoury

The exhibition was born out of Teymour Khoury’s curiosity about the life of his grandfather, whom he barely knew. As Bernard explains, this exploration into the archives of a little-known chapter of history was difficult, especially because “this was a generation of architects that do not archive and do not document things, they were doers.” Still, the exploration revealed a story of progress and decline and hope that, in some ways, mirrored that of the city, while pushing the boundaries of what was possible.

There are chapters of our history that we failed to document. It’s a memory that’s important to preserve. I’m not talking about a very objective history; I’m talking about what escapes the very consensual and simplistic chapters of history. I think Khalil is an exception that escapes the consensus. To me, it’s the most interesting way of documenting a territory or a period, is to see what escapes, to try to look at the accidents, and what were the limits of the possible, and Khalil is a very interesting character in that sense. – Bernard Khoury

The inaugural edition of We Design Beirut, a four-day design experience in Lebanon’s capital, happened from May 23-26, 2024. Its program aimed to showcase creativity across disciplines with exhibits, talks, and workshops. Founded by Mariana Wehbe and Samer Alameen, the event opened up conversations about the urban fabric of Beirut through “City Explorations,” where studios and creatives displayed their work, including Iwan Maktabi’s flagship store transformation, Studio Nada Debs’ craft techniques display, and the opening up of the Interdesign Building during the “All Things Must(n’t) Pass: A Subjective Recount of Khalil Khouri’s Life and Career as a Designer” exhibition.