A new Brutalist landmark has arisen in Beirut, stark and solid in its concrete geometry, remarkable for its scale alone in a neighborhood of otherwise modestly-sized structures. But anyone who passes by the new Modulofts tower in the Ashrafieh district is likely to be caught slack-jawed for another reason: the motion of the building?s dynamic facade. Panels emerge at random from the glass front of the tower, sliding out into the air and altering its appearance at any given moment. They?re actually interior walls that triple as privacy screens and sun shades, activated from inside by the occupants of each apartment.

Lead architect Fouad Samara, whose eponymous firm enjoys a new office on the ground floor of the building, approached the project with a whole checklist of expectations. He wanted the building to have lots of light, a sense of spatial luxury, honesty in its use of materials, and functional flexibility. The stack of luxury lofts addresses a need for dense high-end housing in the city while also contributing to the beauty of Beirut itself. The architects drew inspiration from traditional Lebanese houses known as “beit,” marrying their orderly and streamlined sense of purity with the flexibility of late modernist urban lofts in cosmopolitan cities like London.

?Functionally, we tried to fulfill the demand for flexible ? truly and effortlessly flexible ? small to medium size residential units in the heart of vibrant Beirut,? says Samara. ?It was import...