Hillside Villa / Joe Serrins Studio

Architects: Joe Serrins Studio
Location: Baabdat, Lebanon
Lead Architects: Joe Serrins, Jared Brownell
Area: 562.0 m2
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: Vicky Mokbel

Text description provided by the architects. Twenty miles above Beirut, the village of Baaddat on Mount Lebanon serves as the dramatic site for this single family villa. The property is covered with pinenut trees clinging to the rocky slope which drops twenty meters at a 45-degree incline. The architecture is a vehicle for traversing the steep slope and bringing the client in contact with the landscape.

Composed of a series of boxes, the building climbs four stories, digging into the hillside to create outdoor terraces at each floor. Multiple interior and exterior stairs wind through and around the house, linking the program with landscape and view. Several double-height interior volumes reinforce visual links to the sloping hillside and highlight the movement of people through the house and around the property. Large picture windows frame mountain vistas and allow for moments of stillness.

The program is organized by floor: the lowest level is the garage, and level two includes a media room and three bedrooms. The third level is the living area which has tall ceilings and the largest of the four terraces. The fourth level holds the master suite and a private terrace with a swimming pool tucked against the hillside. The building is made of CMU and cast-in-place concrete which is typical for structures of this size in the region.

The exterior is clad in a rough-hewn grey stone interrupted by a volume of white plaster and several folding glass planes with operable doors. Landscape terraces and property rubble walls are made with a rough-faced local rock. The interior finishes are composed of a limited palette of materials: the same grey stone from the exterior is sliced and honed for floor and tile applications and cedar siding wraps the elevator and interior stair core top to bottom. The bedroom levels have end-grain oak floors and simple plaster walls.