Of Water and Stone

Of Water and Stone unfolds within Beirut’s Roman Baths in the framework of We Design Beirut’s second edition, converging historical resonance, architectural ingenuity, cultural rejuvenation, and communal healing.

At first encounter, the site stands as both a scar and a monument; a palimpsest of Lebanon’s layered history. Since the 1st century AD, these baths bore witness to the rhythms of daily life across eras. Even in their fractured state, they remain a testament to the audacity of Roman engineering and the evolving identities of Beirut across centuries.

The baths were more than architecture: they were spaces of ritual, where water softened body and spirit, and where community formed through practices of cleansing. To bathe was to believe that care for the self was inseparable from care for society; a public act of rejuvenation and communion.

In dialogue with this legacy, twenty-one designers reimagine marble to create new works for the exhibition, sponsored by Stones by Rania Malli. Their interventions echo the site’s layered histories — from baths and jacuzzis that once animated collective life, to the overlooked stories of Beirut’s women, to the material cultures of water, soaps, wells, bubbles, spa practices, and bird baths. Each gesture conjures both the cultural past and potential futures of this archeological ruin.

Here, marble and water are not incidental but elemental, mirroring We Design Beirut’s vision: to revive heritage not as static artifact, but as living matter, shaped and reshaped by each generation that inherits it.