Lebanese university

Institute of fine arts

Branch- 4
Architecture department

‘Internship Report’
Internship summer 2010

Prepared by:
Ibrahim El Lahham

Revising Professor:
Dr. May Karame

2010-2011

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Appendix:

Greetings 3

introduction 56

Projects:
1- 723 724 78
2- client Fouad Shayya (residential building) 9 10

3- Client al Forsan Development :

Villa 3040 10 11

Villa 3092 11

conclusion 12

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Greetings:

First of all, I would like to thank my professor Dr. May Karame for being there for us during

all our internship period, for her ultimate care for us over the past two years, for her devotion

to her job as a university academic tutor, last but not least for her for all the help she offered

us and all the questions she had answers to whenever we asked them, We are going to miss

you the most after our graduation, a new stage of our life is awaiting for us, thank you …

Thanks to my parents for being there for me throughout the past 4 years of my life, and being

there to fulfill all my dreams to becoming an Architect first and being a master in it too,

hopefully all your hard work will pay off and I’ll come back with a higher education that will

raise your head up high…

Now that it’s our last year , and 9 months from now we would all be set on a different path,

thank you all my class mates and friends, I really cannot thank you enough for everything ,

because of you I do believe in team work , we truly are a team , if u look at our

accomplishments , we would see that no other class had done what we did, we changed

university to the better , we made our class the best ever, prepared the open house with our

bare hands, helped each other, laughed together, shared the hardest moments together and

WE will graduate this year with our heads high in the sky … hope you all find your right

directions in life … THUMBS UP!

And off course, thanks to E. Zuhair Wehbe for this Joyful internship experience of summer

2010

TO THE MEMORY OF MY GRANDPA MOHAMMAD TERYAKI

YOUR SOUL IS STILL AROUND AND I CAN STILL HEAR THE SOUND

OF YOUR QUITE SMILE IN THE FAMILY HOUSE

WE MISS YOU

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INTRODUCTION:

As university ended, we were all asked to find a summertime internship program to start

experiencing the world of architecture out there, which is a very important point in creating

an architect.

the difference between university and the real office work is that once you are out , you are

on your own, no professor to take his opinion and correct, no grading system to deal with, no

academic life, but off course the thing in common is time,

in fact time is a little bit harder to deal with during work, since the amount of projects is

higher, and the period given is always limited, so what you need is to be aware of everything

and to be quick in setting a proposal for the client because the competency is higher, and time

plays the most important role in suiting the clients needs and demands.

I started looking for a job for summertime, and after a whole month of interviews and calls, I

realized how hard and bad it is to find a job in Lebanon, and I have also noticed a very

disturbing fact about architecture domain in Lebanon, most of the companies I had interviews

with were more interested in my cad and 3dmax skills than my real architectural potential,

some didn’t even ask for a portfolio.

Even though I am not yet a graduate nor desperate looking for a job, it was a little bit of a

trial of what I will get in after graduating,

hopefully, the reason for what happened would be my undergraduate level but as long as I

can say about my previous experience I can literally say that the demanded person was more

of a draftsman more than an architect, but the title of architect is however needed.

the questions asked were like how much does it take you to draw a plan, do you know how to

render on 3DS max, can you use Photoshop, do you know how to do the bill of quantities…

whereas the questions that are more likely to be asked are about my architectural abilities,

are you a team player, what position are you interested in …

But it has helped me know that architecture is not taken as it really is in Lebanon, and that

for my future, I learned that working on your own is better than working under some

companies name that takes all the credit you do and you get taken for granted, because we

have more graduating people than needed, the architect has turned into a draftsman.

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 After one month of search and calls, I applied for an engineers office via El waseet weekly

newspaper, a small business, and I was directly taken, located in Qabrshmoon beside the

BBAC bank in a residential building, the director and owner of the office is E.zuhair wehbe, a

civil engineer who works in architecture, and terrible was what I found at first.

But as time passed, I had more responsibilities to handle in the office, in charge of all the

projects study and design.

as I stated before, since the moment I started working in the office, all of the projects design

was handed to me, even I was put in a position that I have to amend some other projects

previously done before my starting time, and I quickly started viewing and getting into the

companies portfolio, and I wasn’t really impressed by what I found, once again I concluded

that each should work in his own profession, and that a civil engineer work should never

interfere in architectural design.

However, the good thing was that I was capable of changing whatever I felt is wrong and the

director kindly agreed to everything. in addition to that, another benefit is that I had direct

contact to the manager and to the projects, being able to be responsible of the project from A to Z,
whereas in many other companies, my role would more likely to be related to visualization and drafting,

something I don’t really find myself in.

The company mostly works in residential projects (Villas, residential buildings…)

In addition to some schools.
mainly his work was most related to the area of Aley region, being a previous head of
municipality, he had so many connections referring to the surrounding area, so he
had a good reputation in the area because of his municipal work too. This gave him
more projects to work on.

As I started working, I had many projects to deal with, mainly residential type
buildings. Some of the projects that I am going to discuss below are 723 724 villas
which is a project for 2 twin brothers, situated in Baawerta in mount shouf, and is a
project that had lots of options and at the end it got to a point where architecture
was not present. Another project is a residential building or *villa* as the client
would like to call it. And till now I do not know what this project is or what should I
call it. 3092 is the most project I preferred working on, since I started from scratch,
no previous plan, no definite demands, just the site and my vision of how to build a
1000 m2 per floor mansion for a Saudi owner. Also 3057 is a project I was
responsible of, and the restrict of this project was the high slope, but I managed to
figure out a solution later.

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Project 1: 723 724 clients: Aresto and Flaton

When I first entered the company I was first handed this

project to check on and study a new proposal for the
elevations.
The design was terrible; the main elevation had more than 4
different archetypes.
A 4 floor villa in a height of 16 meters, with 10 meter arches
and all kinds of openings, claddings, drawings and rock
carvings and animal statues to symbolize the wealth and
money of its owners, as the manager said. To my surprise, the
design was demanded by the owners themselves by a picture
they saw on the internet or in a magazine and they ordered
something very similar to it.
4 floor high columns unattached to any structure and not doing
any part of a structural element only for the goal of highness
and wealth showing, a very appalling fact.
However the openings in the elevation were not as they are
found in the plans, so I had to redraw the whole elevations
again to check for flaws, after over checking the plans I found
out that the plans were not studied as they should have been
studied.
For example in one floor the window is 160 cm horizontally and
on the other floor it’s an 80 cm bathroom opening because
there was a bathroom over the salons.
It was not easy to go over all the details and change a lot in the
elevations nor in the plans since the construction was already
started and they already reached to the second floor slab. So
what I tried to do was to try to make the openings even and
united to one architectural style. I studied the possibilities to
fix the windows in one vertical direction, and fix the whole
elevations to one architectural style, even and openings that
show harmony and amended the plans according to the
elevation I designed.
After reviewing the new elevations with the engineer he was
satisfied and agreed on the new elevations and design, but
after displaying them to the clients, the elevations were
refused by them, reason was that they wanted something that
can show more power and wealth. Not the site nor the height
of the villa as they wanted to call it, can offer such a proposal
since the site was a small rectangle with its width more than its

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length so the mass plan was a pure rectangle of 25m by 10
meters, and the distance from the street was only 3 meters
taking every inch of the setback limit. So there could be no
space for having an approach to the *villa*, and the most thing
they refused is reducing the number of the decorative columns
from 6 to 2, I did not and still don’t understand how a 16
meters high decorative column shows the wealth of the owner.
Unhappy with the results of the proposal, I had to add more
columns by the request of the clients, which resulted in a main
elevation with 8
(15 meter)high columns, also upon request to be topped by a
statue of a lion, on the top of the columns crown.
That was villa 723, the 724 villa was similar to the first, but
the other brother demanded a high stair leading to the
entrance of the villa, and 2 columns defining it. A little bit less
strange demands but the start of the design was wrong, for
example the salons were 22m * 5.5m which is not a quite sane
space to be in, but I was not able to amend this mistake
because construction was already launched and reached a level
where any change in plans is not really possible.

After finishing with the design we turned to the b.o.q of the

two villas, since construction was already in progress. After
accomplishing the b.o.q and sending them to the clients, I got a
message that they think it’s a high budget and they want to
decrease the amount of columns and carvings they demanded
at first, so finally they made up the design they wanted, and
the final design was set on site majorly by the site and the
construction site manager with the vision of the client.
At that point I had a conversation with Mr. Wehbe about what
happened, I expressed my surprise, and demanded an
explanation, the reply was that he cannot disobey his clients
and it is their project and we cannot interfere in this option.
After this project I strongly believe that there should be a
committee that studies the projects before building, and most
important is to educate the clients before starting a design,
therefore the building law book should include even to design
matters and interfere a bit more in the site’s surrounding.

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Project 2: Client: Dr. Fouad Shayya

This is the second project I worked on in my summertime job, it is a

project that has been modified a lot and still reached anywhere till
this day. at first it was planned to be a one floor basement single
house, after a while the client ordered that he wants four more
apartments in addition to the his deluxe apartment, but he demanded
that the 5 apartments building, 3 floors building should look like a
villa.
the engineer has already made a plan layout with the clients
confirmation, so my first step was to design the elevations and
create a plan layout for the 4 apartments above the ground floor
deluxe apartment, which was not an easy thing to do, since there
was still no core for the building, no stairs, and the client wanted his
apartment to be full separate from the other apartments above,
Which was a real problem. but after all I convinced him that the
stairs will be attached to the building and his entrance will be from
the back of the building same as the other apartments leading to the
elevator and stair case.
After finishing with the new proposal of the plans and elevations, a
meeting was held with the client concerning the project.
After returning from his trip to Sharm el sheikh in Egypt, our client
has taken some pictures of a hotel he checked in, and he asked for
the whole design to be put away and to start a new design similar to
what he has seen in Egypt (stepped hotel with terraces).
he also demanded use of pan tiles from the top of the building to
the ground floor.
It took me a while to re-plan everything once again, but the stepped
building idea created a problem in structure and in the layouts of the
upper floors, for example with each floor level the apartment had to
be shifted 3 meters to the inside, creating a problem in the areas and
in the structure. So it was very difficult to make the apartments
usable and function able. After lots of trials and scratches and
thinking I was able to find a layout that can be considered a very
good proposal. I also drew the perspectives and had them rendered.
After showing it to Mr. wehbe he was very impressed by the time it
took to re do everything from zero, and the ability to create a whole
new layout in one day. Another meeting was held with the client and
he approved of the new proposal.
However the client had to leave the country for 2 weeks, and once
again after he came back, a new idea in mind and the old proposals
are to be put behind.

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This time he had a magazine photograph of an ancient building with
carvings, arched openings, columns, crowns, stairs, all made by rock
and decorated by rock carves and artistic meaningless decorations.
And once again animal statues were present in architecture!
For my good luck, I left the office before reworking on this project
again.
I realized that beauty is a matter of taste and that people with
money want their money to show in their houses no matter in what
way, instead of using this money in green buildings and investing it
in something useful like pvc’s or water heating sun system, or water
collecting system knowing that it is in the mountains and water can
easily be collected. the money was spent on useless decorations that
kills architecture and leaves us with a nonsense project, with a cheap
design and lots of money thrown away, even though the client is an
educated person.

Project 3: AL FORSAN DEVELOPMENT

VILLA 3092

This project is my first project designed from A to Z by me, the site is in

obay, Alley region beside kabrshmoon, with a very beautiful vista and
weather; also the site is of a very high slope. we visited the site and
analysed the site’s slope and possibilities of building on it. Like the car
entrance, the main pedestrian entrance, the approach of the villa, and
fitting it to the urban context it was in and making it suitable in the
topography of the site on a hill top.
The villa is for a Saudi business man, so the style of interior layouts would
be different than the international style we are used to work with, since the
Arab layouts of villas demand separation between the female and male
areas, by what they call a majlis, the women’s majlis and the men’s majlis.
In addition to that Saudi clients demand huge spaces, more services, higher
quality work, and sometimes they demand lots of carvings and useless
decorations. But since I was not dealing straight with the client, but with
the company selling the villas to the client, I was away from the decorated
façade, so what I cared about most was the volumes and the orientation of
the villa to suit the sites needs and views.
From the idea of the women’s and men’s majlis, I derived the concept of the
villa split into two volumes; a rectangle and a square in mass plan
connected by a cylinder which forms the entrance on the L shaped land.
The villa has 3 entrances, one is the main entrance for the family, second is
the women’s majlis entrance which should be separate from the men’s. and
third is the men’s entrance. From the inside the 3 parts are connected by
the main salons and dining room plus the kitchen which serves the two
majlis’s and the main area.
Once you enter the villa, the cylinder is placed in a way facing the amazing
vista from Beirut to Saida and the mountains of Shouf, I used double glass
curtain wall on 2 levels with a void in the middle of the cylinder that is

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interrupted by fancy stairs leading to the first floor level. Each majlis has its
salons and a separate dining room with w.c’s serving the dining room.
It consists of 7 master bedrooms, a suite for the owner of the villa, 2 living
rooms, 4 salons, a chimney room plus library, an office for the owner, a
kitchen with maids, drivers and security room, a multi purpose room facing
the pool on the basement level and 3 winter gardens. The whole built area
is 950 m2 for per floor, however it decreases in the first and basement floor
level.
Lebanese modernized style was used in the design; I used arcs and pantile,
and some wooden hanging structures that connect the volumes to each
other. The whole villa is oriented to make use of the beautiful views around,
so I used large openings instead of small ones to frame the views and bring
the exterior into the interior. I also made use of the inner gardens on the
first floor and the ground floor.
After finishing the design period, I moved to the details plan and structure
drawings, which was an easy job to do since everything is already studied
to be in place.
Electric, mechanical and detailed architecture plans were made and sent to
K.S.A for approval of the company. After a while we received a call from the
company approving of the design and asked us to go forward with the other
needed maps.
But that was the last week before my time ended so I did not get the chance
to continue working on the project I started.

Villa 3057

In the same area of the previous project comes this villa, which is below
the first one in level, but with a site with a higher slope and width. Also the
site was of a smaller area of 1200 meters all. And the street level is the
highest point of the site.
So I used this point of the sites slope and created a split level, in which the
first floor level is 1 meter higher than the street level and the reception area
is 3 meters below. so the entrance is the street level and the stairs are in
both upwards (to the bedrooms) and downwards to the reception area and
kitchen.
When I first proposed the project to Mr. wehbe, he was really afraid of the
idea of split level since it is not really used in Lebanon and people aren’t
really fond of it. but after a long conversation about the reason to use split
level and how it is more functional than the ordinary one. And that it will
cost much more digging and more money to go a higher level and we would
be left with 2 useless basements, he finally agreed to the idea.
The importance of the choice I took lays in suiting the villa to the site and
orienting it right to the topography of the site. Since my study over the past
4 years taught me that the most important thing in a project is preparing it
to be fit in the site to be put in. since architecture is a matter of place.
We did not move any farther in this project since we sent the files to k.s.a,
and we did not get any reply from the company, till the day I left the job.
Meanwhile I am waiting for a call from mr wehbe to design the elevations in
details and finish the file.

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Conclusion :
What I gained from this internship this summer is related to having the
ability to change and I was able to do it. in fact, university has trained us to
have the will to change what ever we think is wrong. Long years of practice
and work in university and out of it has taught us to be critics in the
architectural field.
In addition to that I also gained more self confidence and a stronger ability
to show my opinion when ever it is needed. I also learned more about civil
engineering from mr wehbe since his real major is civil engineering. For
example I learned to make details and sections for civil maps and prepare
the maps for the urban planning directory, to deal with clients, to be after a
project from scratch to full construction, knowing the steps a project goes
through.

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