Wada Cabins
Deir El Ahmar, Lebanon 2019
The Women Association of Deir El-Ahmar approached us to design and deliver a community project funded by the EU. The brief implied that the project should seek assistance and employ young Lebanese people from local technical schools in order to teach them construction skills and introduce them to wood building techniques. The project comprises six wood log cabins and an open market place. The cabins would be rented to tourists in search of rural tourism experience and the market would promote and sell local food prepared by women from the area. The whole project strategy was developed around local participation, rural regeneration and youth community reinsertion. The choice for a readymade log home solution was the obvious choice since it allowed for a quick and easy in-situ installation and building process. The log homes were custom designed for minimal on site cutting time and required a training period of two weeks for all involved parties.
The involvement of the community in the building process was striking and the social experience memorable. The design quality was superseded by the community values that the project injected during the time spent there. Each passed day was perceived as a challenging timeline to beat and victorious events were happening daily to commemorate certain installation objectives such as the concrete slab, the wall erection, the roof structure installation, etc. Each cabin was 25 sqm and consisted of an open plan room with a bed, an open kitchenette, a bathroom and an outdoor patio. The fully wood cladded cabin was as fun to build as to deliver. The logs were pre-cut and windows and doors only needed were pre-assembled and required only to be fitted inside the walls. The use of local stone for the lower walls and the terrace was a community choice and matched the wood panels perfectly. The market was made with local steel structure and was kept open to facilitate interaction with the rest of the project.
