Bend and flex: Restaurant stretches a point

Beirut – A former liquor factory has been transformed into a Flexthetics bar and restaurant in Gemmayze, a hotspot of Lebanese nightlife.

MYU, designed by Beirut architect Paul Kaloustian, is dominated by twin arches made from a stretchy, translucent black fabric. The overall effect is one of sheltered intimacy in futuristic rooms-within-a-room.

Kaloustian’s approach also enabled him to retain traces of the building’s past: the black covering stretches across deliberately untouched graffiti and marks of age and use on the walls and ceiling, placing the space in the past and the present all at once.