Philosophy – Zak Ghanim

Award-winning Zak Ghanim Design Inc. is a team of dedicated professionals distinguished by devotion and thoroughness to fundamental elements of urban composition. The design of Zak Ghanim speaks for itself. Its objectives and effects are profoundly clear and artistically poetic. Ghanim’s vocabulary has been a cultural bridge between east and west, that strives to give his visions an intellectual identity, and reinforces his inner drive.

Ghanim’s belief is that the same stroke of a pen or a droplet of ink used by a designer, may create a heavenly utopian castle, or a miserable torture chamber. Therefore, his design language is an acceptance of, not an escape from, human values.
Ghanim’s team strategy is achieved by a consistent search for better issues that lift the soul and feed the spirit, by creating a divine synthesis that injects a rare fusion between art, technology and humanity.
Their commitment is : “Regardless of how we grow, we are obliged to the basics of kinetic aestheticism that brought us success in the first place”.

GHANIM BELIEVES THAT BUILDINGS MUST HAVE ROOTS AS MUCH AS THEY HAVE
FOUNDATION, BECAUSE WE AS A SOCIETY:

Have conquered outer space but not inner space.
Tried to outdo God.
Possess higher incomes but fewer morals.
Fall in love in the heart of cities that have no heart.
Learn how to make a living but not a life.
Own fancy houses but broken homes.
Build wider freeways but narrow viewpoints.
Create communities where we have to drive to take a walk, and where marriage lasts 2 months while a trial lasts 2 years.
Change the bylaws to satisfy the in-laws.
Use technology to fix up things that are messed up by technology.
Spoiled ourselves so that accessories became necessities, and ‘lie’ability turned out to be best assets.
Consider violence an expression of intimacy, by creating thousands of laws and failing in performing Ten Commandments, and by being convinced that making war will make us live in peace.
Leave banks both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
Tired ourselves looking for comfort.
Save relationships by getting a divorce.

Forget that:

We never plan to fail, but we fail to plan.
Our lantern does not give more light if we blow out other people’s lanterns
Peace will blossom only when the power of love overrules love of power.
The difference between ingenuity and stupidity is that ingenuity has limits.
A donkey is a horse designed by a committee.
It is essential to understand before being understood, and to realize that God created us with two ears and one mouth to hear more.
To distinguish between partial sharing and sharing parts..
If someone dies, it is not a proof he lived.
Being critics does not mean we have to be critical.
He who does not have money is poor, while he who has nothing but money is also poor.
Good design does not cost any more than bad design.
In chess as well as life, at the end of the game, the king and the soldier are placed in the same box.
Never be afraid of adventure, Noah’s arc was built by amateurs while Titanic was built by professionals.
Fines are taxes for those who make mistakes, and taxes are fines for who do not.
Heroes and victors are not the same.
Freedom is not to have the right to select who abuses our freedom and provides us with a democratic dictatorship.
Love does not mean we need someone we want to live with, but someone we cannot live without.
A person with a PhD in Chemistry does not always have chemistry.
See only thorns in roses rather than roses in thorns.
We have been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor.
We have so much in the showroom, and nothing in the stockroom.
Building in different countries does not make an international architect.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Marriage of first glance: Divorce of first mistake.
It takes one tree to make 10,000 matches, but one match to burn 10,000 trees.
We need principles for principals not principals of principles.
Killing the poor does not kill poverty.
Not guilty does not mean innocent.
We accepted suicidal as mercy killing, allies murder as friendly fire and civilian death as collateral damage.
Gift is a polite bribery and bribery is a shameless gift.
Creating a sharp image would not improve a fuzzy concept.
We can tell how much blue the people have been by the way they smile.

The problem is that surrounding structures are:

Good from a far but far from good.
Gracing the cover of Vogue, yet they are nothing but vague.
In the city but not for the city.
Touching the sky before feeling the ground.
With a legacy that does not last more than cotton candy on a tongue.
Not a refuge but a refusal.

It is time to make a difference, or simply hit delete.

Ghanim's "Predictably unpredictable" work is:

Not architecture of rules but new rule architecture, that is in denial of routine forms, which constantly cancel each other out.
Neither a guide nor a puzzle, a school nor a code, skillfully provocative to see the unseen

Ghanim's Motto is : Only dead fish flow with the stream.

Yet in his books, architecture is:

A mission not a profession, a poetry in motion in a refreshing gesture intending to accomplish out of the society we live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.
A performing art as well as fine art, cruising us from a hopeless end, to an endless hope of moon lit road in midday while injecting surrealism and calculated fantasy of restrained elegance and stable instability.
A curious blurring of ration and nature to chase the rainbow.
A zealous passion for his immortal mistress of brick and mortar, moonlighting the road in midday.
Crash course with destiny merged with a charisma implant where dynamism and serenity live side by side in a pure mess.
A notion of frozen music, unfinished narrative that is waved into a frame less painting or a walk-in sculpture.
An engaging exploration of a polite disunity of volumes in a seamless continuity.
Pays attention to details not to the architect.
An enigma that is rapped in mystery, baffling as midnight, in which labels are left behind, and eloquently conversed in sentences not paragraphs.
Rooted in the reality of its environs, but projected towards the future in a disciplined stillness.
Meant to satisfy all the legitimate regulations while breaking every command.
Fashionable only when the mind is “dressed up”.
Situational not universal, intimate not intimidating, whimsical yet practical, individual not collective, to offer a perception not reception, coalition not collision, invitation not irritation.
With no center or boundaries, compellingly linking the eye to the mind, where the floor is the earth, the walls are the wind and the ceiling is the sky.
Pushing the envelope, and throwing away the slide rule and tee square to create a sensible ambience accommodating masses of people without committing environmental suicide.
To propel modernistic notions of flowing space into the Z dimension while spiraling outwards infinity.
To join head and heart in a joyous response to life, inspiring us to communicate to create and create to communicate.
To maximize the minimalism, representing a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
To convert the ordinary to extraordinary, as in listening to a symphony with the eyes, or visualizing optical poems.
A real statement instead of piece of real estate that changes the news from something that has happened to something that is happening.