It is evident that home is not an object, a building, but a diffuse and complex condition that integrates memories and images, desires and fears, the past and the present. This thesis focuses on ornamental motifs especially the wheat motif that is unique and that is mostly found in the Bekaa. Each country or region has a local motif that individuals have used to decorate their dwellings. Due to the sparse knowledge concerning local ornamental motifs in Lebanon and the Bekaa specifically and the globalization of design and pattern there has been a serious decline in the use of local motifs and ...

Eating out of home is becoming more prevalent. The consumption habit, though traditional, is also related to the modernization and transformation of society. Nowadays, it is essential when examining eating out to consider not only the food but also the space and the situation under which consumption takes place. With the growing number of restaurants and competition in the market, the demand for more sophisticated, stimulating, and ambience-rich settings is also increasing. Multiple factors starting from the name, the food served, the service, the price, the atmosphere, and the physical ...

Starting with an interest taken in the immersive quality of images, this thesis looks at immersive visuals, a set of formal aspects that instigate a sensation of spatial presence in the audience. In particular, it focuses on a contemporary visual effect found in mainstream cinema dubbed “movie-ride” effect. Although the literature shows the historical importance of immersive images, it falls short of thoroughly discussing the “movie-ride” effect and its immersive qualities. To that end, this thesis presents a technical and thematic reading of said effect, to a purpose of reading it as an immersive ...

Solar Chimney (SC) is a passive design used to enhance natural ventilation and space conditioning in a building, limiting the energy requirement of the building to low operational costs. In Lebanon, high energy consumption of residential buildings is recorded mainly for heating and cooling, marking the highest consumption in the Western Mid Mountain (WMM) climatic zone. Thus, proposing the SC application for limiting this high thermal demand in residential buildings of the WMM zone for both heating and cooling would limit the total energy consumption. SC design has various types (Stand-alone SC ...

The emergence of respiratory diseases and pandemics through history such as the severe acute respiratory disease (SARS), the Spanish flu, and the current Covid-19 epidemic highlight the importance of ventilation in the transmission of airborne diseases. This research examines the buildings in Lebanon converted for hosting the cases of the Covid-19, focusing on the three pillars of sustainability which are the economic-social and environmental. This pandemic is affecting all the countries in the world, and concerns have risen about future epidemics that can cause the death of the population. In ...

In the high mountains of Lebanon, internal comfort heavily relies on fuel consumption for indoor space heating. Being a country that lacks natural resources such as fuel and gas, the energy sector in Lebanon had been unable to meet the market demand for a long time. The simple solution that was adopted to compensate for the electricity shortage over the past years was to rely on private generators for power supply. This solution urged additional energy costs for heating and cooling demands through the inefficient use of air cooling and heating, and since cooling and heating depend primarily on ...

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic caused by highly contagious respiratory diseases brought about unprecedented crises across the world, and a housing crisis among others. Lebanon in particular, which is the context of this study, was heavily impacted by the pandemic, exacerbated by a pre-existing refugee crisis and by the Beirut Port explosion. This study aims to research the characteristics of an emergency shelter that mitigates the spread of contagious respiratory diseases in Lebanese urban areas as the latter are hubs of infectious diseases. In this context, the study researches the characteristics ...

[MOTIVATION] Throughout history, art and aesthetics have been a fundamental part of human life. Our ancestors carved their life stories in caves, and temples, whereas in our postmodern society, individuals have become detached from art and began observing rather than understanding its aesthetic reactions. Art reflects life occurrences, believes and fantasies. This study will tackle the following questions: To which extent can art generate erotic fantasies and aesthetics on canvas? Which notions and techniques in erotic abstract painting may be used to project, and visualize aesthetics of one’s ...

Public schools guarantee education that is invariably available to pupils, even to those who have financial difficulties. Being easily accessible, attending such schools has remained high until today; in 2019, US public institutions educated over 50.8 million scholars, to which the national average number of pupil per public school was about 526 scholars (Brian D. Ray, 2021). Conversely, public schools in Lebanon do not enclose such high number of students due to their unsatisfactory reputation: most of these schools are in bad conditions, outdated, and have limited classroom resources. Also, ...

Design excellence seeks architectural solutions that respect historic buildings and sites. Marj Besri dam project is one of the many proposed projects addressing the ongoing water availability problem, in Lebanon. On the one hand, finite resources and high cost restrict the potential of the no-dam alternative for water management such as rainwater harvesting, waste water reuse and groundwater storage (Council for Development and Reconstruction, 2014). On the other hand, several studies focus on the impact of the dam project on the excessive greenhouse gas emissions in the early stages of the ...