RIBA+VitrA Talk: Rethink Conventions with Lina Ghotmeh

The 2024 RIBA + VitrA Challenge: Rethink Talks series celebrates practitioners challenging expectations and rethinking conventional approaches, using architecture as a catalyst for positive urban and social change.

For the final talk in this year’s series, we invite internationally and critically acclaimed architect Lina Ghotmeh to explore how her portfolio of work challenges conventions, pushing the boundaries of innovative and sustainable design.

Lina Ghotmeh

Lina Ghotmeh © Kimberly Lloyd

Lina Ghotmeh leads her practice Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture in Paris. Echoing her lived experience in Beirut – a palimpsest of unrest – her designs are orchestrated as an “Archeology of the Future” where every project emerges materially sensitive and in symbiosis with nature.   

Her work includes “Stone Garden” tower in Beirut, Dezeen Award ‘project of the year’ (2021), exhibited at the 17th Biennale in Venice, at MAXXI in Rome and in cooper Hewitt in New York; the Estonian National Museum, Mies Van der Rohe nominee; Ateliers Hermès the first energy-positive, low carbon manufacturing building in France; the 22nd Serpentine Pavilion in London and the future AlUla Contemporary Art Museum.  Lina Ghotmeh was Louis I. Kahn professor at Yale, Gehry Chair at Toronto University (2021-2022) and held the Kenzo Tange professorship at GSD Harvard (2024). She has been awarded the Schelling Architecture Prize (2020) and the Great Arab Minds Award (2023) among other prizes and nominations. 

This RIBA + VitrA event is part of the 'Challenge: Rethink' talks series in partnership with VitrA Bathrooms.

This partnership reflects a shared commitment to add social, economic and cultural value to society, and VitrA Bathrooms are proud to be supporting such an inspiring programme.

With innovation at its core, a global reach and a tradition of collaborating with celebrated architects and designers, the VitrA bathroom brand has become a world leader, synonymous with contemporary sophistication since the mid-1900s.

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Lead image: Bahrain Pavilion, Osaka Expo, Osaka, Japan

Anatomy of a Dhow, Bahrain Pavilion

Osaka Expo Photo © Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture

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