Building for Life Among the Ruins

“I don’t know – stubbornness? Perseverance?”

Adib Dada muses over what adjective best describes him.

“In Arabic, we have a saying – ‘Oh mountain, wind will not shake you.’” Adib laughs. He says people confuse his calmness with a cold personality. “Even during the 2020 Beirut explosion, when I was trapped under the rubble with my two-year-old daughter, I was extremely calm,” he recalls. “I was just figuring out what to do next.”

In 2009, while attending the master’s program in architecture in New York, Adib took advantage of the melting pot of inspirations. “I did a lot of courses, workshops and extracurricular activities involving biomimicry, urban farming and living systems, etc.”

Based in Beirut, Adib is the founder of Lebanon’s leading sustainable architecture consultancy, The Other Dada. The consultancy focuses on designs that encourage health and well-being. With over 20 structures built across the MENA region, their innovative work has won awards, such as the EU Neighbours South Eyes in the Eco-Innovators category and the McNulty Prize.

Adib shares that his first jobs were entrenched in New York’s bustling art scenes. He says this time period gave him some perspectives that changed the course of his future work. “In my previous life, I would go to galleries, do tours of the art and design fairs, and go to auctions to buy things for clients,” Adib recollects. “It was very exciting, but also very empty and repetitive. What was the impact?”

With the realisation that he wanted to make a meaningful impact on society, Adib decided to bring together the experience and knowledge he gained from studying biomimicry and other forms of life-centred architecture. Ready to make a change in his beloved community, Adib returned to Beirut.

“Lebanon was just opening its eyes to renewable energy. However, they were building this infrastructure that ruined the natural habitat,” he explains. “That’s how the Beirut River Project began.”

The Beirut River Project involved Adib taking interested individuals on a walking tour around the Beirut River to reveal different pollution points. “People would be confused because my job was an architect, and I held an office job. But, in my mind, this needed to be done – I took anyone interested.” He believed that people needed to be informed about the river where they lived. “If someone called me to say that they wanted to see the river, I’d drop everything and take them there.”

This created the perfect opportunity for Adib to do something meaningful.  Thus, The Other Dada was born in 2019 – an urban space rewilding consultancy that helps build life-centred architecture.

The Other Dada, or tOD, is a regenerative, biomimicry architecture consultancy firm that helps the public, private, and educational sectors develop environmentally friendly designs for their establishments. “My consciousness majorly shifted – I used to build habitats for humans that were a little less bad for the environment, but my focus now has been healing the land and healing the people through healing the land,” he explains.

Thus far, tOD has planned biodiverse spaces in Babylos (Lebanon), Oman and Ningbo (China), and acted as an environmental consultant and connector that combines art and sustainability. Adib strives to design habitats across challenging terrains and climates with minimal carbon footprints, creating expansive possibilities for cohabitation among all the species.

In his GARLIChouse design (currently being budgeted for construction in Lebanon), Adib integrates a rooftop garden and open-air rainwater collection pond for both domestic and wildlife usage. Adib’s designs also remind us that what works with nature is bound to endure.

“Growing up through the Lebanon War, my mom played a big role in my life,” Adib says, recalling the first green space he adored. “For me, it was a huge balcony, and she had turned it into a jungle with many plants, birds and cats. This was our sanctuary.”

Today, Adib does the same for his children, who must go through the anxiety of destruction far too often, just as he did as a child. In addition to creating their living space nestled in the mountains, he also vigilantly helps at their school, trying to make it a safer place for children to spend their days. “People do not realise how toxic cement, glue and many other construction materials can be,” he shares passionately. He had already pulled up his sleeves and gathered other parents to work on rewilding the toxic cement spaces at school. “All my kids’ friends think I work at the school!” He laughs gleefully. This seems like his favourite project yet.

“Children can sense your anxiety. My wife and I try to keep them calm and distracted with nice things, as much as we can.” He shares this with absolute calmness and nonchalance. “My wife and I, we just keep working. You cannot stop working anytime there’s a crisis in Lebanon – you won’t get anything done!” Though we laugh, there’s bitterness in the air.

Despite his back injury from the 2020 explosion, Adib stays laser-focused on getting things done.  “As soon as I could get back to get active again, I thought, I’ll focus on multiplying the forests that we're planting,” he says. In this region ripe with emergencies, Adib aims to establish a system of sustainability that extends beyond traditional emergency relief.

Adib wants to remind people of their agency, which they are often made to forget.

“We are sold this idea that we are powerless and everything that’s happening is much bigger than us,” he says.

“It’s important to remember that we are sovereign and that we are powerful – there’s so much we can do ourselves, however small.”