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An Architect Strikes (Olive) Oil In The Middle East

by Lindsey McCormack
Spring 2007

Hashim Sarkis has an unusual roster of clients for an architect: fishermen, farmers, child workers. The soft-spoken professor splits his time between the Graduate School of Design, where he directs the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture; his Harvard Square studio; and Lebanon, where he takes on rural design projects in conjunction with local NGOs—and subsidizes this work, “Robin Hood-style,” with more lucrative commissions in Dubai and Cambridge.

Sarkis knows the frustrations of the non-profit world—the piecemeal grants and shifting funding priorities. For a housing project in the coastal city of Tyre, his first payment was three kilos of fish. Yet working with a bare-bones budget has also brought discipline to his work, complementing his instincts for keeping buildings open to the land. At the beginning of the design process, he often plots the contours of the surrounding landscape down to each shrub. Structural lines match the geometry of olive groves, and courtyards open on clusters of gnarly trees.

Sarkis hopes the roof can be turned into a restaurant that serves meals with fresh oil.

“If I didn’t take the landscape into account, I’d be taking away one of the few assets rural people have,” Sarkis says. “I try to be respectful with the landscape, to enhance its presence. Sometimes there’s not enough money to have all our activity inside: But we’re blessed with a beautiful climate—so we’re able to use more outdoor space.”

The resulting buildings—schoolhouses, canneries, apartment blocks—hug the rocky Lebanese countryside. They also correspond to particular social needs. In 2002, the René Moawad Foundation in Beirut commissioned Sarkis to build an olive-oil press for a farmers’ cooperative. In the impoverished northern region of Batroun, most people would take their olives to small presses owned either by family or members of the same political party. The foundation hoped a larger, more modern press would help rural families plug into the lucrative international market for fine olive oil. oil2

Sarkis soon learned that many farmers avoided big commercial presses, where their harvest could be mixed in with cheaper oil. It was a matter of pride. The three-story structure Sarkis came up with slopes into a hillside, with the cool bottom floor set aside for storage vats. Farmers enter through a cellar passageway, where the olives are weighed, and proceed to a glassed-in catwalk overlooking the pressing room. From here they can monitor the whole process, easing any suspicions of corruption.

The Batroun press has had a promising start, serving some 870 growers last year and exporting oil to the U.S. and Europe. Still, funding ran out before Sarkis could add the pièce de resistance: a woven bamboo-and-rubber screen that would cover the building, shielding the sensitive oil from intense Mediterranean sunlight. “It can be frustrating that money comes in trickles—unfortunately, you cannot build in pieces like that,” he says. “Sometimes you have to accept the fact that some things will never be finished.”