From Alef to Architecture: Calligraphy, Light, and a Spiritual Contemporary Design

In Aytat, Lebanon among the pines stands a 17th-century mansion built by the Talhouk family, a place that once functioned as a former headquarters of the clan: part residence, part authority, part threshold between private life and public order. Over centuries, its value was never only architectural, it was civic and social, and it held the idea of “gathering” before gathering became a program.

By the time Dr. Sami Makarem acquired the long-neglected property in 1971, this mansion had already lived several lives. What Dr. Makarem brought to it was not simply ownership, but authorship: a scholar, writer, and artist who treated the Arabic letter as philosophy—where form is inseparable from meaning, and where beauty is a moral discipline, not decoration.  The house gradually became a vessel for that world: a place where language, thought, and art would flourish in the Lebanese community.

Today, under the guidance of his family, the mansion has been restored and transformed into the Sami Makarem Cultural Center—preserving his knowledge, art, and history, and reopening the house as a living cultural institution.

It is within this density—architectural, civic, and intellectual—that our project begins.

A Scholar, Writer, Artist, and Poet

Dr. Sami Makarem was a scholar, writer, artist, poet, and a professor at the American University of Beirut and known for work spanning Arabic literature, Islamic thought, and mysticism. The house-turned-cultural-center carries that heritage: a lived environment where thought, art, and contemplation coexist. It also sits within a family continuum of calligraphy—rooted in the classical mastery of Sheikh Nassib Makarem and extended through Dr. Makarem’s own freer, more experimental calligraphy practice, later echoed by the next generation.

Adding a New Space Without Rewriting the Building

An extension in a heritage setting is often approached with two default instincts, both risky.

The first is imitation: repeat arches, match stone, blend in. The second is indifference: insert a contemporary object that is visually “clean,” but culturally disconnected. In a place like this, both moves fail for the same reason— they ignore what the building actually is: not a style, but a layered narrative.

The heritage residence is extended through a contemporary intervention that preserves the building’s character and safeguards its historical identity.

Our design approach to the extension request was to step back and read the site’s identity before drawing anything—its historical presence, its cultural role, and the spiritual intelligence embedded in Dr. Sami Makarem’s work. From there, we approached the extension request as a spiritual design in the architectural sense: not symbolic decoration, but an atmosphere shaped through clarity, proportion, rhythm, and light—an intervention that expands the center while protecting the quiet unity that defines it.

The Power of The Alef

In Arabic calligraphy, alef (أ) is the first letter—an upright line, a beginning, an axis. Across many readings, it is associated with unity: a vertical gesture that aligns the earthly with the transcendent. This project does not translate that meaning into literal iconography. Instead, it treats alef as a design generator: an architectural discipline of clarity, verticality, and restraint.

The result is a contemporary intervention that remains rooted in place—structurally precise, visually light, and emotionally composed.

In spiritual interpretations, the letter Alef is often associated with oneness: unity with God, a vertical gesture that aligns the earthly with the transcendent. 

When Calligraphy Becomes Architecture

In many projects, calligraphy appears as an applied gesture—engraved, printed, or curated as a graphic signature. For a place so deeply tied to calligraphic culture, that would feel insufficient. Here, the letterform is not added to the building; it becomes the logic of building.

The extension is conceived as a spatial “page”: a structural lattice that establishes rhythm and proportion, where repetition and cadence do the work that ornament typically performs. The arch is present—yet no longer as masonry. It is reinterpreted as a light framework, a measured sequence that recalls heritage without copying it.

Above, linear strokes extend overhead as canopy. They read as movement—directional, fluid, reminiscent of the pen’s gesture—yet they remain disciplined within the geometry of the frame. The architecture does not display letters. It behaves like writing: measured, intentional, and continuous.

The pergola contemporary architectural frame is inspired by one of Dr. Makarem’s calligraphy artworks of the letter Alef, a letter long associated with unity.

Light as Ink

If calligraphy is the art of the stroke, this extension treats light as the stroke’s second medium.

Throughout the day, shadows change character: crisp and graphic in the morning, softer and more atmospheric later, drifting across surfaces as though the space is being rewritten. The ground becomes a page, the walls become receivers, and the extension becomes a device that translates time into nuance.

This is where the concept becomes experiential, and unity is sensed through continuity: a consistent rhythm that holds the space together while allowing it to breathe.

A Living Layer: Nature Integrated into the Design

Vegetation is not introduced as decoration; it is integrated as a living continuation of the framework. Climbing greenery threads into the arches and along the lattice, softening the geometry and giving the structure a seasonal cadence. The addition is allowed to mature and to be marked by time—an important posture in a setting where heritage is preserved, but not frozen.

In this way, the extension resists the idea of a finished object. It becomes a living layer: an intervention that evolves rather than merely appears.

A contemporary outdoor majlis formed by a light calligraphic frame—where greenery and filtered daylight animate the terrace, and the fountain becomes the quiet center of gathering.

A Contemporary Outdoor Room for Culture

Functionally, the extension operates as a new outdoor room for the cultural center: a shaded platform for reading, conversation, small gatherings, and quiet contemplation. It is not simply a pergola or terrace. It carries the dignity of a contemporary majlis—a space that supports exchange without demanding attention.

It mediates between interior knowledge and exterior landscape, allowing the cultural life of the house to extend outward. The historic stone volume remains the archive of memory. The new structure becomes a frame for presence—an architecture for learning, gathering, and reflection, held lightly.

Sacred Geometry and Spiritual Contemporary Design

The project’s spiritual dimension is expressed through notable order: proportion, alignment, and repetition that the body reads as coherence before the mind names it.

A rectangular frame establishes stability and measure, and a repeated arch cadence sets a ceremonial rhythm—like a line of poetry structured by meter. The canopy introduces controlled softness, tempering the grid’s certainty with a quieter atmospheric layer. Together, these moves create a hierarchy that feels quietly intentional: structure below, atmosphere above.

Sacred geometry is often discussed as a collection of forms. Here it functions more as an attitude—a commitment to clarity, balance, and the invisible logic that holds a space in stillness.

The Project’s Quiet Thesis

The most compelling aspect of this design is not treating heritage as a visual checklist. Instead, the design expands the identity of the Sami Makarem Cultural Center by translating its essence—calligraphic culture, intellectual calm, spiritual resonance—into a contemporary spatial system.

Everything began with the alef: one line, one measure, one orientation. From that simplicity, the project builds something rare: a spiritual contemporary design that expands the place without diluting it; a new language that does not erase the old; and a sense of unity felt not as a statement, but as atmosphere—held in rhythm, light, and the disciplined beauty of a single vertical stroke.