Carwan Gallery was founded in Beirut in 2010 by architects Pascale Wakim and Nicolas Lecompte and started out as a pop-up art and design venture, the first of its kind in the region. For three years the duo staged pop-up shows at various locations abroad, aiming to foster a relationship between designers and craftsmen through commissions. This has resulted in more than 15 international creatives finding new artistic inspiration in middle eastern crafts to reinvent traditional techniques and create unique contemporary objects.

But Carwan Gallery has now left the nomadic trail to settle permanently at Gefinor Center, a landmark complex by architect Victor Gruen in the heart of the Lebanese capital. The gallery occupies a spacious ground floor unit with a raw utlilitarian edge, wrapped around in huge floor-to-ceiling windows that allow in floods of daylight.

The objective is to continue to create exhibitions related to cutting edge design and unique contemporary objects at Carwan Gallery’s new space and elsewhere, in addition to providing creative and design-related consultancy services and assistance to collectors, architects, and interior designers. celebrating the new venue’s kick-off is a cool presentation of curated design objects by many of the international artists and designers that it represents, including Nada Debs, Philippe Malouin, India Mahdavi, Bernard Khoury and Lindsey Adelman.

The opening of Carwan Gallery’s new venue at Gefinor Center was festively celebrated with an intriguing food design installation by Charbel el Hachem and Carlo Massoud. Special guest India Mahdavi especially flew in to present the landscape series which she exclusively designed for the gallery, and to sign her new book entitled home chic.