Anastasia Elrouss

About ANA-Anastasia Elrouss Architects

My architectural office ‘ANA-Anastasia Elrouss Architects’ is an architectural and urban practice founded in 2018 that’s passionate about the built and the unbuilt environments. My architectural vision aim is to reimagine how the user connects with the world in which he or she lives.
 
Launched and based in Beirut, my architectural firm works with a team of international consultants who understand its ethos: creating a structured intervention that results in spaces of liberty, allowing appropriation and leaving room for appropriation. In my architectural work, I usually focus on the concept of the transient – this fourth dimension that is sometimes overlooked by architects. With its designs, my firm seeks to create “evolutive” or “volume capable” buildings that adapt both to the user’s needs and to the environment in which they exist.
 
While I am a strong believer in spatial fluidity, my work places a strong emphasis on details and transitory objects. Whether designing a city, a building or a house, the same rules apply – albeit on a different scale. my work is identified by its accessibility and flexibility, allowing the user to have a say in the space being created.
 
While always keeping the end user in mind, I like to also reflect the moment, the temporality of the way we live. My work captures the moment, while rethinking the preconceived limits of human space. The architecture I design and draw is engaged in multi-level conversations with itself, the client and the user, in order to create flexible, livable and highly distinctive buildings, villas, structures and public spaces. Once I complete the work on a specific site, the project must be still able to evolve according to the end user’s needs and life changing events. And when working within existing buildings, I tend to show how each place can be inhabited differently, allowing a whole new building – and lifestyle – to emerge.
 

How did you find your way into the field of architecture?

The notions of flexibility, interpretation and evolution are part of my vision for an optimum living space. I’m also interested in secret and intimate spaces, such as secret gardens and/or volumes physically connected to other functions within the same project. My aim is to give the user freedom to make the space public or private, depending on their needs.

This last point reflects the way I lived my youth. I lived freely in an open and limitless house (without interior doors) shared by six women from several generations. During my childhood, I created my own secret spaces, both real and imaginary. This way of perceiving space extended beyond my house and spread all around when I walked in the historical center of my home city Tripoli, located in Northern Lebanon.

I developed an escape mechanism that helped me when I was conceiving my projects, both in my architecture studies and in my professional life. Drawing the ideal situation that would capture the tastes and needs of my clients became a natural exercise where all the definition of spaces exploded. In my approach, I highlight the role of people living in a specific place (home and city) and then I create a continuous dialogue between public and private. Ultimately, I build secret places that open up an imaginary world for the inhabitant, without limits or judgment.

How did your professional experience as an architect help you become an activist for gender equality in the construction field and in architecture specifically? 

Travels, Meetings and a Desire to Change the World
I’ve known since I was a child that change would never happen on its own. My dream was to make a positive change as a woman architect and urban planner. Anastasia Elrouss Architects and Warchée NGO came about as a result of women meeting and seeking to effect change – women whose paths most probably would never have crossed if they hadn’t been engaged in the same profession.

Through my professional encounters across the globe, through a real exchange of cultural values and as a Lebanese and female architect and urban planner, I felt the need to launch a debate about gender equality and the role of women in the workplace and the world. This came about as a result of similar challenges that working women have to face even when they’ve had different career paths and lived in different countries.
At the same time, I felt that I was shining a new light on this topic through my life experiences as a Middle Eastern female architect and urban planner, and also through my professional engagements in such differing places as France, Holland, Romania, Dubai, Canada, Mexico and Lebanon. It was clear that women still had a long road ahead to achieve gender equality, and that their skills and achievements wouldn’t be enough to ensure real independence.

I realized that the fight for gender equality in the workplace, in various cultures and countries, was just beginning, and that we’d have to work at every level – professional, legal, cultural, geographic and educational – to further women’s rights. If a woman’s achievements remain limited to her person alone, it will be impossible to effect change. Real gender equality can only succeed once each and every working woman has been successfully integrated into the workplace and on an equal footing.

What comes to your mind, when you think about your diploma project?

I always wanted to work on the transformation of spatial realities through architecture, utilizing architecture to tap into experience, senses and emotions. So, I chose to work on Lebanon’s juvenile boys prison “Islahiyet Elfanar,” a poorly designed space that didn’t produce any psychological improvement for the young incarcerated boys and didn’t allow them to reintegrate into society once they exited the prison.

The prison consisted of bedrooms, a TV, two computers, a kitchen and a playground. I took the position of empowering the users in their internal spaces through revisiting the programmatic experience and introducing self-healing activities through which they can learn a craft or trigger a passion to help them dream, have future goals and get reintegrated in society. My designs included an acting school; a painting and pottery school with a large exhibition space; wood, metal, glass and pottery workshops (and the possibility to sell their produced items from the prison on open days); a computer school, with regular visiting professors, where the juveniles are mixed with school students through educative program; and multifunctional mini basketball and mini football fields. Considering that the juvenile prison had to be very safe for inhabitants and visitors, the spatial layering reflected this issue via a continuous process of unfolding hidden spaces with many controlled gates. For example, the theater could be completely disconnected from the rest of the prison when it was accessed by the public, and then reintegrated again through large mobile trucks. The inspiration started with old fortresses but in a contemporary manner, in which physical and spatial mobility could make them flexible and accessible while they remained monumental and imposing.

For two years, I was directly in contact with the 30 boys in prison, and I conducted weekly workshops with them on drawings, sports, computers, crafts and theater because I wanted them to be my main clients and rebuild the prison with them in mind. The interesting part is that I learned the secret activities and how they appropriated empty spaces while injecting them with their dreams. So, a hidden circulation layer was added in between all activities and left empty as a space of liberty in which they were free to express their anger, their hopes and their talents. The in-between space was a breath of fresh air because it was conceived with an internal 70m vertical urban farm, open to the sky by large skylights, and functioning as an internal greenhouse completed with a suspended garden. The internal spaces of the juvenile prison were made of flexible and transformable materials, while the exterior remained a layering of concrete walls, giving a blank, harsh impression from outside but warm and inviting on the inside.

My main advisor for my thesis project was Howayda Elharithy, who was instrumental in pushing the users themselves to recreate their internal spaces in order to add life and human traces to the juvenile prison. She also pushed me experiment with how the inserted activities can create income and value to the prison and to people living outside of it. Through my architectural studies, I was also positively influenced by my professor Marwan Ghandour, who encouraged me to always take a clear architectural and urban position and to push my experimentations to either highlight a reality or try to transform it and appropriate it through the production of space. I learned from Marwan that a neutral architect cannot push any boundary, and that it is waste of time, budget and effort if change doesn’t happen through architecture.

These two professors influence my current work because I believe in rebellious architecture, I work on the five senses through layering of materials and functions, on the surprise effects in spatial experiences and on recreating a space that represent the user deeply through always shaking the grounds of traditional expressions. For me architecture is a living being that can transform, adapt and certainly be an important player on lives through small houses, through building and through cities.

What are your experiences founding Anastasia Elrouss Architects and working as a self-employed architect?

As a woman architect, the first step was a bit complex because I always dreamed to leave my physical trace through architecture, but I also wanted to be an active change-maker architect, working on gender equity in the workplace and in the construction fields. I first made an important international impact as a founding partner in a Beirut-based architectural firm, but to truly make my mark as an architect and as a woman, I realized that I had to venture out on my own. So, believing firmly that through my architectural vision I could change the world, I founded my own firm, alongside an NGO, Warchée, which works on the gender-equity subject. The challenge was very big because I was perceived as very demanding, too ambitious and too young in a Mediterranean social context in which women are supposed to be primarily thinking of their social status with respect to their family first. 

Founding my own firm was a very enriching experience for me because it allowed me to get in touch with my architectural skills in a more private and direct manner. It gave me the freedom to express and impose my architectural visions in several ways:

• Highlighting the users (the human) and drawing the spaces of their dreams through reinterpreting reality (using emotions, spatial layering and experience).
  
  
• Working with the immediate (the site) and the larger context (the city or neighborhood) while injecting a rebellious act of either continuity or disruptiveness to create a powerful relationship with the context.
  
  
• Creating intricate spatial experiences through physical and emotional spatial layering and reinterpreting the physicality of any given programmatic function.
  
  
• Researching innovative materials and construction techniques that are custom-designed for every project and client in order to write a different story each time through architecture. 

I find that the experience of a self-employed architect is thrilling. It’s a daily challenge to work on oneself first and to build a team of talented architects around you. I believe in team exchange and research while respecting common values: creativity, experimentation and reinterpretation with a sense of humility. In my work as an architect, I reinterpret time and space. I give them a great fluidity by trying to subtract the inner limits between functions. I redefine the reality of these functions through their utilities. I think about how to inhabit the space specific to each person. I gradually redefine the nature of the boundaries between the inside and the outside and make them devoid of any gender identity. What previously was originally built by men is part of a new structure that’s become more fluid and sometimes more feminine.

How would you characterize Beirut as location for practicing architecture? How is the context of this place influencing your work?

Beirut’s skylines and landlines are very interesting to live and to work with especially in the architectural and urban planning fields. For me Beirut is a chaotic city but the chaos is ordered by individuals who dare to appropriate the in between and the voids within the city. This inspires me to experiment more with the spaces of appropriation, transformation and secret getaways, while redefining the limits of my architectural interventions.

The disadvantage of the system is that there is no general urban planning common vision, so contemporary architectural projects end up being the initiative of private clients who are willing to take the risk and bring new spatial ideas up front. These private initiatives usually are very adventurous and seek to create a landmark.

The city of Beirut and Lebanon as a whole are an important role player in the projects I create because they are multilayered with a never-ending experience between extremes. 

About ANA-Anastasia Elrouss Architects

My architectural office ‘ANA-Anastasia Elrouss Architects’ is an architectural and urban practice founded in 2018 that’s passionate about the built and the unbuilt environments. My architectural vision aim is to reimagine how the user connects with the world in which he or she lives.
 
Launched and based in Beirut, my architectural firm works with a team of international consultants who understand its ethos: creating a structured intervention that results in spaces of liberty, allowing appropriation and leaving room for appropriation. In my architectural work, I usually focus on the concept of the transient – this fourth dimension that is sometimes overlooked by architects. With its designs, my firm seeks to create “evolutive” or “volume capable” buildings that adapt both to the user’s needs and to the environment in which they exist.
 
While I am a strong believer in spatial fluidity, my work places a strong emphasis on details and transitory objects. Whether designing a city, a building or a house, the same rules apply – albeit on a different scale. my work is identified by its accessibility and flexibility, allowing the user to have a say in the space being created.
 
While always keeping the end user in mind, I like to also reflect the moment, the temporality of the way we live. My work captures the moment, while rethinking the preconceived limits of human space. The architecture I design and draw is engaged in multi-level conversations with itself, the client and the user, in order to create flexible, livable and highly distinctive buildings, villas, structures and public spaces. Once I complete the work on a specific site, the project must be still able to evolve according to the end user’s needs and life changing events. And when working within existing buildings, I tend to show how each place can be inhabited differently, allowing a whole new building – and lifestyle – to emerge.
 

How did you find your way into the field of architecture?

The notions of flexibility, interpretation and evolution are part of my vision for an optimum living space. I’m also interested in secret and intimate spaces, such as secret gardens and/or volumes physically connected to other functions within the same project. My aim is to give the user freedom to make the space public or private, depending on their needs.

This last point reflects the way I lived my youth. I lived freely in an open and limitless house (without interior doors) shared by six women from several generations. During my childhood, I created my own secret spaces, both real and imaginary. This way of perceiving space extended beyond my house and spread all around when I walked in the historical center of my home city Tripoli, located in Northern Lebanon.

I developed an escape mechanism that helped me when I was conceiving my projects, both in my architecture studies and in my professional life. Drawing the ideal situation that would capture the tastes and needs of my clients became a natural exercise where all the definition of spaces exploded. In my approach, I highlight the role of people living in a specific place (home and city) and then I create a continuous dialogue between public and private. Ultimately, I build secret places that open up an imaginary world for the inhabitant, without limits or judgment.

How did your professional experience as an architect help you become an activist for gender equality in the construction field and in architecture specifically? 

Travels, Meetings and a Desire to Change the World
I’ve known since I was a child that change would never happen on its own. My dream was to make a positive change as a woman architect and urban planner. Anastasia Elrouss Architects and Warchée NGO came about as a result of women meeting and seeking to effect change – women whose paths most probably would never have crossed if they hadn’t been engaged in the same profession.

Through my professional encounters across the globe, through a real exchange of cultural values and as a Lebanese and female architect and urban planner, I felt the need to launch a debate about gender equality and the role of women in the workplace and the world. This came about as a result of similar challenges that working women have to face even when they’ve had different career paths and lived in different countries.
At the same time, I felt that I was shining a new light on this topic through my life experiences as a Middle Eastern female architect and urban planner, and also through my professional engagements in such differing places as France, Holland, Romania, Dubai, Canada, Mexico and Lebanon. It was clear that women still had a long road ahead to achieve gender equality, and that their skills and achievements wouldn’t be enough to ensure real independence.

I realized that the fight for gender equality in the workplace, in various cultures and countries, was just beginning, and that we’d have to work at every level – professional, legal, cultural, geographic and educational – to further women’s rights. If a woman’s achievements remain limited to her person alone, it will be impossible to effect change. Real gender equality can only succeed once each and every working woman has been successfully integrated into the workplace and on an equal footing.

What comes to your mind, when you think about your diploma project?

I always wanted to work on the transformation of spatial realities through architecture, utilizing architecture to tap into experience, senses and emotions. So, I chose to work on Lebanon’s juvenile boys prison “Islahiyet Elfanar,” a poorly designed space that didn’t produce any psychological improvement for the young incarcerated boys and didn’t allow them to reintegrate into society once they exited the prison.

The prison consisted of bedrooms, a TV, two computers, a kitchen and a playground. I took the position of empowering the users in their internal spaces through revisiting the programmatic experience and introducing self-healing activities through which they can learn a craft or trigger a passion to help them dream, have future goals and get reintegrated in society. My designs included an acting school; a painting and pottery school with a large exhibition space; wood, metal, glass and pottery workshops (and the possibility to sell their produced items from the prison on open days); a computer school, with regular visiting professors, where the juveniles are mixed with school students through educative program; and multifunctional mini basketball and mini football fields. Considering that the juvenile prison had to be very safe for inhabitants and visitors, the spatial layering reflected this issue via a continuous process of unfolding hidden spaces with many controlled gates. For example, the theater could be completely disconnected from the rest of the prison when it was accessed by the public, and then reintegrated again through large mobile trucks. The inspiration started with old fortresses but in a contemporary manner, in which physical and spatial mobility could make them flexible and accessible while they remained monumental and imposing.

For two years, I was directly in contact with the 30 boys in prison, and I conducted weekly workshops with them on drawings, sports, computers, crafts and theater because I wanted them to be my main clients and rebuild the prison with them in mind. The interesting part is that I learned the secret activities and how they appropriated empty spaces while injecting them with their dreams. So, a hidden circulation layer was added in between all activities and left empty as a space of liberty in which they were free to express their anger, their hopes and their talents. The in-between space was a breath of fresh air because it was conceived with an internal 70m vertical urban farm, open to the sky by large skylights, and functioning as an internal greenhouse completed with a suspended garden. The internal spaces of the juvenile prison were made of flexible and transformable materials, while the exterior remained a layering of concrete walls, giving a blank, harsh impression from outside but warm and inviting on the inside.

My main advisor for my thesis project was Howayda Elharithy, who was instrumental in pushing the users themselves to recreate their internal spaces in order to add life and human traces to the juvenile prison. She also pushed me experiment with how the inserted activities can create income and value to the prison and to people living outside of it. Through my architectural studies, I was also positively influenced by my professor Marwan Ghandour, who encouraged me to always take a clear architectural and urban position and to push my experimentations to either highlight a reality or try to transform it and appropriate it through the production of space. I learned from Marwan that a neutral architect cannot push any boundary, and that it is waste of time, budget and effort if change doesn’t happen through architecture.

These two professors influence my current work because I believe in rebellious architecture, I work on the five senses through layering of materials and functions, on the surprise effects in spatial experiences and on recreating a space that represent the user deeply through always shaking the grounds of traditional expressions. For me architecture is a living being that can transform, adapt and certainly be an important player on lives through small houses, through building and through cities.

What are your experiences founding Anastasia Elrouss Architects and working as a self-employed architect?

As a woman architect, the first step was a bit complex because I always dreamed to leave my physical trace through architecture, but I also wanted to be an active change-maker architect, working on gender equity in the workplace and in the construction fields. I first made an important international impact as a founding partner in a Beirut-based architectural firm, but to truly make my mark as an architect and as a woman, I realized that I had to venture out on my own. So, believing firmly that through my architectural vision I could change the world, I founded my own firm, alongside an NGO, Warchée, which works on the gender-equity subject. The challenge was very big because I was perceived as very demanding, too ambitious and too young in a Mediterranean social context in which women are supposed to be primarily thinking of their social status with respect to their family first. 

Founding my own firm was a very enriching experience for me because it allowed me to get in touch with my architectural skills in a more private and direct manner. It gave me the freedom to express and impose my architectural visions in several ways:

• Highlighting the users (the human) and drawing the spaces of their dreams through reinterpreting reality (using emotions, spatial layering and experience).
  
  

• Working with the immediate (the site) and the larger context (the city or neighborhood) while injecting a rebellious act of either continuity or disruptiveness to create a powerful relationship with the context.
  
  

• Creating intricate spatial experiences through physical and emotional spatial layering and reinterpreting the physicality of any given programmatic function.
  
  

• Researching innovative materials and construction techniques that are custom-designed for every project and client in order to write a different story each time through architecture. 

I find that the experience of a self-employed architect is thrilling. It’s a daily challenge to work on oneself first and to build a team of talented architects around you. I believe in team exchange and research while respecting common values: creativity, experimentation and reinterpretation with a sense of humility. In my work as an architect, I reinterpret time and space. I give them a great fluidity by trying to subtract the inner limits between functions. I redefine the reality of these functions through their utilities. I think about how to inhabit the space specific to each person. I gradually redefine the nature of the boundaries between the inside and the outside and make them devoid of any gender identity. What previously was originally built by men is part of a new structure that’s become more fluid and sometimes more feminine.

How would you characterize Beirut as location for practicing architecture? How is the context of this place influencing your work?

Beirut’s skylines and landlines are very interesting to live and to work with especially in the architectural and urban planning fields. For me Beirut is a chaotic city but the chaos is ordered by individuals who dare to appropriate the in between and the voids within the city. This inspires me to experiment more with the spaces of appropriation, transformation and secret getaways, while redefining the limits of my architectural interventions.

The disadvantage of the system is that there is no general urban planning common vision, so contemporary architectural projects end up being the initiative of private clients who are willing to take the risk and bring new spatial ideas up front. These private initiatives usually are very adventurous and seek to create a landmark.

The city of Beirut and Lebanon as a whole are an important role player in the projects I create because they are multilayered with a never-ending experience between extremes. 

Image of MM Residential Building Proposal with a skyline of Beirut behind it

Image of MM Residential Building Proposal with a skyline of Beirut behind it

Office Space, Anastasia Elrouss Architects

Office Space, Anastasia Elrouss Architects