House of Today is a non-profit organization, committed to cultivating a sustainable design ecosystem in Lebanon, that transcends international borders. For over a decade, the organization’s overarching aim is to strengthen dialogues in the design world, expanding the reach of contemporary Lebanese designers and their creative processes, through mentoring and educating, curating collections and nurturing connections.
Salim Al-Kadi is an architect based in Beirut. He is a graduate of the American University of Beirut (B.Eng/Arch. 2004) and Columbia University (M.Sc. 2006). Since 2011, Salim has been a senior lecturer at the American University of Beirut’s Department of Architecture and Graphic Design.
Since 2014 Salim has also been involved in SIGIL, a collective involving Khaled Malas, Alfred Tarazi and Jana Traboulsi. Together they have completed multiple projects including ‘excavating the sky: a project on Syria’ commissioned by and exhibited at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, ‘current power in Syria’ exhibited at the 2016 Marrakech Art Biennale, ‘Monuments of the Everyday’ #therevolutionisamirror at the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale and “electric resistance - monument to a destroyed windmill” exhibited at the 2017 Sharjah Biennale in the Sursock Museum in Beirut.
In 2016, he founded the Beirut Architecture Office. A practicing architect, Salim believes that the responsibility of the architect is not to build confidence in the built environment but rather disrupt the apparent stasis by introducing necessary hesitation. This motivation was recently explored in his K29 Keffiyeh 001 project, where he designed the first Keffiyeh manufactured from bullet-resistant material. In 2017, Keffiyeh 001 was followed by a Keffiyeh 002 which was exhibited in New York at the Museum of Modern Art as part of “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” exhibit.
