In 1959, the implementation of the Lake Qaraoun plan caused the displacement of a group of people that used to reside near the river in Saghbine. The artificial lake altered the land’s topography and thus the river’s path. In the winter, the rise of the water level around the site creates an island where the home they once resided in used to be.
After the creation of the still waterbody, the site united four different landscapes. A lake, river, mountains, and fields each stand on one of four sides and melt into each other with one rotation. The views, best seen on the peak of the island in the summer, approach the land as the water rises in wetter seasons.
With the ebb and flow of the water, accessibility to parts of the land is altered and circles form of rocks that are pushed along the land’s slope.
Using the existing grid of the abandoned houses and the axes of the four landscapes, a series of structures are uprooted to magnify the qualities of these landscapes. These structures are then connected with temporary elements (like rock-filled clay walls that crumble into the rock formation, straw roofs that serve the diverse bird species on site, mesh walls that hold climber plants…) that serve as employing nature as an architect to create a chapel that honor the landscapes around it and the history of the people whose homes were once stolen by water.