Architects of the Year 2025: Lina Ghotmeh Architecture
Since founding her Paris-based architecture firm in 2016, Lina Ghotmeh has steadily gained international attention. In recognition of her work to date, the French-Lebanese architect was invited to London in 2023 to design the prestigious Serpentine Pavilion. Since then, she has become an indispensable figure in the field. Lina Ghotmeh Architecture (LGA) stands for an approach to planning that makes the use of sustainable practices and materials a core requirement of all its projects. Conceptually, the firm repeatedly draws on regional references and traces of the history of the respective location, such as for the new leather goods workshop for Hermès in Normandy or the ‘Stone Garden’ residential building in Beirut, which reflects both the country's war history and Lebanon's building tradition. In addition to construction projects in the residential, cultural and mixed-use sectors, Ghotmeh's work can also be seen in the form of temporary structures and exhibition designs.
Jury Statement
Lina Ghotmeh impresses with her work by creating a narrative interplay between what was and what is to be, in line with her self-proclaimed guiding principle ‘Archaeology of the Future’. For her work, the architect and her team delve deep into local history in order to find answers for her building projects in terms of authenticity, materiality and social issues, as well as aspects of sustainability. Most recently, her office impressed with the pavilion for the island state of Bahrain at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan. Under the project title ‘Anatomy of a Dhow’, it created a modern form of framework inspired by dhow sailboats and thus a bridge between the maritime Bahraini identity and Japanese timber construction – thereby initiating an intercultural dialogue on sensitive, reversible architecture with a low ecological footprint and recyclable raw materials. For its holistic approach, Lina Ghotmeh Architecture deserves the title ‘Architects of the Year