© Gilbert Hage

The caravan is the country of Lina Ghotmeh. Like the Leo Africanus portrayed by his compatriot Amin Maalouf, the Lebanese-born France-based architect has lived an itinerant life between East and West, going from the Beirut of her birth to the Paris of her further training, to the London from where she won her first major competition and back to the French capital to set up a practice. The inevitable cosmopolitan profile that such a biography traces does not however preclude a professional approach characterized by a sensitivity to context and materials, the fruit of an extensive research effort that permeates each building, turning it into an exhilarating condenser of histories.