She dreamed of becoming a geneticist or an archaeologist. Enrolled at the American University of Beirut, a temple of interdisciplinarity, she took as many biology classes as architecture ones. Her first projects helped her decide. At 22, looking for an internship, she applied—where else?—to Jean Nouvel’s studio and was chosen, from among the candidates, to watch the man in black at work. A week later, she was in Paris, literally falling in love with the city while wondering why everyone looked so unhappy. Six months later, she returned to Lebanon. Then she was called back for a London project, on which two of the era’s “starchitects,” Nouvel and Foster (whom she now calls by his first name, Norman), were working side by side. From the first, she learned that being an architect means remaining a child, continuing to dream. From the second, how a firm is structured. Later she would make her own blend, somewhere between the two, without abandoning her initial ambition.
