Words By Allegra Salvadori | Portrait of Mariana Wehbe by Marco Pinarelli
For Mariana Wehbe, Beirut is not a backdrop — it is her material. As founder and CEO of We Design Beirut, she treats the city as a living archive where memory, architecture, and human experience collide. “You feel Beirut’s energy the minute you land,” she says. “This is a country with more than 7,000 years of history, and its charge comes from beauty and chaos existing side by side. By the water, the city feels expansive and alive; in the mountains, it feels strong and rooted; in the villages, it’s woven into everyday rituals. Wherever you go, that mix of history, resilience, and raw emotion is impossible to miss.”
Few places carry this tension more vividly than the Holiday Inn, a modernist tower designed by André Wogenscky and Maurice Hindié in the 1970s. For a brief moment, it symbolized optimism: 26 storeys, crowned with a revolving restaurant, at the heart of Beirut’s nightlife. Then came the civil war. In 1975, the hotel became the epicenter of the infamous ‘Battle of the Hotels,’ a sniper’s nest and battlefield. Today it stands silent, its concrete shell frozen in time. “Now we drive past it as if it never existed,” Wehbe reflects. “But it is profoundly present. Its silence speaks volumes about ambition and loss, wealth and ruin, and the way we choose to remember — or avoid remembering.”
For Wehbe, the creative energy of Beirut is most vividly alive at We Design Beirut itself. “It’s not just about exhibitions,” she insists. “It’s about bringing students, artisans, designers, the young and the old, people from every walk of life together in one conversation. That mix of generations, disciplines, and energies is what makes our creative scene so unique.”
Food is equally part of the narrative. She points to Em Sherif in Monot, the original restaurant where a family legend began. “It’s where the richness of Lebanese hospitality and cuisine is celebrated at its best,” she says. “Em Sherif has become a source of pride for us, carrying Lebanese flavors and traditions brightly across the world — but it all started here in Beirut.”
To feel the pulse of the city, she bypasses hotels and sends visitors instead to the Corniche. “This is where you truly feel what Lebanon is about,” she explains. “On the Corniche, everyone is there — rich or poor, educated or not, local or expat, in a hijab, smoking an argileh, or in a bathing suit running along the sea. It’s the only place where I see the whole country as one, without judgment. It’s also where I go to breathe and to dream, a place that grounds me while reminding me of the Lebanon I long for.”
Stillness, however, is found elsewhere. “In Beirut, being invited into someone’s home is something special,” she says. “If you’re a foreigner, the moment you’re welcomed into a Lebanese home — whether in the city or a village — you begin to feel our energy, our generosity, and you start to understand us. That intimacy, that sense of belonging, is where I find calm.”
And if you have an extra day? “Choose a village, any village,” she smiles. “From Batroun to the Chouf, Tripoli to the South, each one tells a different story. You’ll find architecture that shifts with each region, food that is the same yet somehow never tastes the same, and craftsmanship that carries generations of knowledge in every detail. What unites them all is spirit, resilience, warmth, and pride in keeping traditions alive while adapting to change. Just get in the car, drive, and ask someone for directions. You’ll be surprised by what you’ll discover. And if you get lost — call me.”
For Wehbe, design is not simply a matter of aesthetics, but of memory, generosity, and connection. Beirut, in her words, is a city that resists simplification, where scars and beauty exist side by side — and where magic still waits to be uncovered.
