Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy & International Affairs 🔊 Listen to Post

The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy & International Affairs (IFI) is Zaha Hadid’s first built project in Beirut, Lebanon. Completed in 2014, it forms a part of the historic campus of the American University of Beirut (AUB), where Hadid studied mathematics and engineering from 1968-1971. The building is a purpose-designed facility for policy research in the Arab world, founded in 2006 by former politician and businessman Issam Fares. 

The building formed part of the ongoing campus masterplan of 2002 led by Sasaki Associates. The design responds to its location near a forested part of the campus, with views to the sea beyond.  The footprint of the building is kept to a minimum, with most of the facilities in its upper tiers, the mass of which ‘floats’ above the courtyard that it shades. The winding pathways to the site, along with the curving ramp into the building, weave through ficus and cypress trees, some of which are over 150 years old.

This model is one of a series of process models for the project, which work through the proportions of the cantilevered structure and the positioning of the ramp to explore alternatives for the building’s final form.

Harnessing a local expertise in working with cast-in-situ concrete, the IFI was praised as ‘radical in composition but respectful of its traditional context’ when it earned Zaha Hadid Architects an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016.