We Design Beirut 2025: Revitalizing Lebanon’s Architectural Heritage

We Design Beirut returns for its second edition from October 22–26, 2025, reaffirming the city’s role as a vital node in the global design conversation. Set against a backdrop of some of Lebanon’s most historically significant sites the five-day design event weaves together architecture, craft, and culture to reflect on themes of legacy, revival, and continuity.

Anchored in empowerment, preservation, and sustainability, We Design Beirut fosters collaboration among designers, artisans, students, and architects — creating a vibrant platform for exchange, connection, and creative expression. It’s a space for healing, innovation, and showcasing the region’s growing design talent on an international stage.

A Design Event Rooted in Place

At its core, We Design Beirut is a response to Lebanon’s complex architectural and socio-political history, serving as a living testament to how design can embody resistance, resilience, and remembrance. The opening night pays homage to Lebanon’s most renowned Oud maker, Nazih Al Ghadban, through a special collaboration with Founder & Music Director of the National Arab Orchestra and guest artist Mirna Mallouhi.

Edition Two builds on the momentum of its 2024 inaugural edition, activating seven key venues across Beirut and beyond, including the Abroyan Factory, Burj El Murr, Villa Audi, the Roman Baths, and Immeuble de l’Union, each site carefully selected for its architectural and symbolic significance. From repurposed industrial spaces to rehabilitated modernist buildings, the venues themselves become active participants in the program, embodying a city in flux and reflecting the tensions and potentials of its urban fabric.

Highlight Exhibitions: Legacy and New Voices

Threads of Life, Metiers d’Art, and Skin of a City at Abroyan Factory

The historic Abroyan Factory will host two major exhibitions that foreground Lebanese craftsmanship. Threads of Life showcases traditional and contemporary textile arts, while Métiers d’Art transforms the space into a living atelier, pairing artisans with designers to explore new forms of material expression and heritage preservation.

The Factory will also house Skin of a City, a photography exhibition by Patrick Baz and Anthony Saroufim, two Lebanese photographers from different generations and backgrounds, exploring liberated expression through the human body.

Design ‘In’ Conflict at Burj El Murr

Hosted at the Burj El Murr, Design ‘In’ Conflict is a student exhibition curated by Teymour Khoury and Yasmina Mahmoud and organized by Archifeed with Tarek Mahmoud and Youssef Bassil. Featuring work from students across nine Lebanese universities, and supported by Solidere (The Lebanese Company for the Development and Reconstruction of Beirut Central District), the exhibition examines how conflict shapes spatial experience and architectural form.

Totems of the Present and the Absent at Villa Audi

Curated by Gregory Gatserelia, the Totems of the Present and the Absent exhibition at Villa Audi pays tribute to the pioneering SMO Gallery, which helped launch and nurture many of Lebanon’s most prominent design voices. This exhibition examines personal and collective memory through the lens of contemporary design objects.

Of Water & Stone at the Roman Baths

At the ancient Roman Baths, Of Water and Stone, a marble design exhibition curated by Nour Osseiran and sponsored and produced by Stones by Rania Malli, reinterprets the site’s history of ritual and cleansing. This poetic dialogue between material and site merges the ancient and the contemporary in a narrative of continuity.

Union: A Journey Through Architecture and Light at Immeuble de l’Union

One of Beirut’s modernist landmarks, Immeuble de l’Union (1950s), is undergoing a meticulous restoration led by architect Karim Nader. As part of the event, the site will host Union: A Journey Through Architecture and Light — a retrospective by Karim Nader x Atelier33. The building becomes both subject and object: a physical memory and a canvas for reimagination.

Rising With Purpose at Immeuble de l’Union

Also hosted at Immeuble de l’Union, Rising With Purpose presents the work of emerging Lebanese designers under 30, including Karel Kargodorian, Marc-Antoine Frahi, and Miriam Abi Tarabay. This exhibition is rooted in context and intention, presenting a fresh vision for Lebanese design in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.

Beyond the City: Expanding the Cultural Map

This year’s public program encourages visitors to see Beirut through a new lens. Curated by architect and professor Dr. Omar Harb, the modern architecture bus tour showcases 48 notable buildings and explores the 20th-century monuments that define the city’s post-independence architectural legacy.

With the support of the Niemeyer Heritage Tripoli Foundation, these two major excursions further broaden the program’s scope:

• Tripoli: A rare visit to Oscar Niemeyer’s International Fair, Niemeyer’s largest project outside Brazil, offering insight into its cultural significance and urgent potential for revival.

• Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation: Nestled in the Lebanese mountains, this foundation, designed by the pioneering abstract artist herself, offers an intimate immersion into her world of modular forms and modernist ideals.

The opening night will celebrate the legacy of Nazih Al Ghadban, Lebanon’s most renowned Oud maker, in collaboration with Arab Maestro Michael Ibrahim. This symbolic moment bridges design, sound, and cultural memory.

A Platform for Collective Healing

As Lebanon continues to navigate layered political, economic, and environmental crises, We Design Beirut positions design as a collaborative act of resilience. The event is not merely a showcase; it’s a space of reflection, restoration, and hope. It is, above all, an invitation: to look at heritage not as something to be preserved in amber, but as a dynamic force that can inspire, educate, and build bridges across generations and disciplines.

By foregrounding Lebanon’s rich architectural history, celebrating its craftspeople and designers, and creating platforms for emerging talent, We Design Beirut becomes more than a festival; it emerges as a cultural movement toward renewal.