RELATED STORIES by JPAG Atelier - The Kitchen. Image by JPAG Atelier.

RELATED STORIES by JPAG Atelier – The Kitchen. Image by JPAG Atelier.

Coronavirus – On July 11 evening, at the end of the first lockdown in Lebanon, Jean-Paul El Hachem, founder of architecture studio JPAG Atelier was walking through the empty streets of Gemmayzeh in Beirut and noticed how dark the city was because of the pandemic procedures and the economic situation in the country.

“RELATED STORIES was born on my birthday at the end of the first lockdown. We came to realize how the pandemic really changed our lives and our perception of things. We transformed our homes into our world as the city shrank to our apartment!” Says Jean-Paul El Hachem to Archipanic. JPAG Atelier started with corners of buildings, each showing the function inside apartments with big flashy billboards on the outside.

The billboards themselves give a sense of urban and commercial space to the room. A lonely chef’s kitchen became a restaurant for culinary exploration. A lonely chef’s private kitchen became a laboratory for experimentation. A globe trotter’s bedroom was turned into a motel while a sport addict’s rooftop was transformed into a training field.

Through the imaginary billboards and the short videos the project narrates “how something negative and pessimistic helped us discover ourselves more and made us closer to each other as human beings.” The project invites for a journey of self-discovery and a positive mindset exploring the beauty of transformation even during quarantine.

To give a meaning to the scene, JPAG introduced testimonies narrating their intimate experience within their flat during lockdown. “RELATED STORIES became wider and more emotional. People now can relate to the scenes. What started as an architectural project, became more related to the people.”

JPAG Atelier s a Lebanese based group of creative minds, architects, and artists operating within the field of architecture and digital art. “Our work is a storyteller, mixing the pragmatic with the utopian. We craft volumes and pixels into something more than a boring block of materials, but a sensational piece of art.”

All images and videos by JPAG atelier.