Tony Salamé’s Aïshti Foundation, realised despite the odds, opens with the exhibition New Skin

Lebanese retail mogul Tony Salamé’s Aïshti Foundation, designed by architect David Adjaye, shone during opening night on Sunday. The sprawling luxury lifestyle and art complex, on Beirut’s Jal el Dib motorway, cost more than Dh367 million to build.

A selection of the artworks featured in the New Skin exhibition. Guillaume Ziccarelli / Aïshti Foundation

Lebanese retail mogul Tony Salamé’s Aïshti Foundation, a massive red bunker with laser-cut skin designed by architect David Adjaye, shone on Sunday night on Beirut’s Jal el Dib motorway. One last crane towering over the sea was the only sign of the manic last-minute race to complete the new mall and art space on time for the launch, for which many flew in from Singapore, New York, Paris and London. The event was the culmination of a weekend of festivities announcing the opening of the sprawling luxury lifestyle and art complex on the Mediterranean, which cost more than US$100 million (Dh367m) to build. More than 3,000 guests attended, including international names such as artists Daniel Buren and Maurizio Cattelan and art dealers Simon de Pury and Jeffrey Deitch.

The anticipation was palpable as hundreds of patrons entered the vast marble lobby and made their way up the escalators, surrounded by Dolce & Gabbana, Céline, Prada or Moschino boutiques. Guests took the elevators towards the art foundation, adjacent to the mall, and moved to the seaside terrace for nibbles and drinks under a spectacular bronze tree sculpture by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone.

“Thank you, David, for the elegance and sophistication you parted on the design,” said Tony Salamé, 48, who started the Aïshti fashion stores 25 years ago and now brings major luxury brands to the region. Proud that his team had achieved a Herculean project in a bleak political context, he added: “We finished this project in two years and four months.”

The dream

The Foundation's opening exhibition, titled New Skin, is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director of the New Museum in New York. While Gioni, Penone, Deitch and rising Lebanon-born architect Rayyane Tabet are familiar with Beirut and its dynamic art scene, many outside the region associate the country with the civil war and its ghosts, including the 2005 crisis, recent repercussions of the Syrian conflict and the looming rubbish protest movement. Some were even hesitant to attend, warned about the precarious situation of a country in the middle of local and regional turmoil.

But Salamé, who began his career by selling imported fashion to friends while a law student at Beirut’s Université Saint-Joseph, ignores these obstacles. He is determined to give shape to his projects in fashion and art, including another building by celebrated Lebanese designer Zaha Hadid, which will open in downtown Beirut in 2018.

“This really is a preview,” Salamé joked at the press presentation last week that took place among the frantic crews of workers scurrying to finish the floors, walls and facade.

“We built this project from scratch in a country where nothing is working," he said. "It’s a personal challenge that I made. In this part of the world, if you don’t set a target, nothing gets done.”

The blueprint

Salamé’s plan, unrealistic by many accounts, was for a 35,000 square-metre complex, including 80 luxury boutiques, a contemporary retail store, a spa and pool, a sculpture garden, restaurants and, of course, the monumental art foundation.

The original blueprint, submitted by Adjaye to Salamé in 2012, has been mostly untouched. Adjaye, the son of Ghanaian diplomats who lived in Lebanon at the onset of the civil war, created a tilted container-shaped building wrapped in a brick-coloured aluminium skin, laser cut into mashrabiya inspired by the texture of the sea. The mall and museum each has its own entrance, but are linked with glass doors on every other floor.

While the retail section is extravagant, with patterned marble floors and several escalators leading up to a large skylight, the art foundation is a white shrine of light and contemplation. Two floors feature monumental scales fitted for the collection’s numerous larger paintings and sculptures, while the intimate dimensions of the two other floors are designed for smaller works.

Throughout the building, slits frame the surrounding sea, city skyline and sky; a sculpture-­filled garden nestled below, looking out over the sea is a “peaceful oasis”, according to the architect.

The art space

By linking the mall and art foundation, Salamé is hoping to democratise art in a country with no contemporary art museums or public cultural organisations. Rather than an elitist hub, he envisioned the building as site for shopping, eating and discovering new artists.

Works from his collection, composed of more than 2,000 pieces gathered in the past 15 years through visits to fairs, galleries and artist studios, have often been lent to museums such as the Whitney and MOMA in New York and Moca in Los Angeles.

Now the collection will be highlighted through the lens of guest curators, such as Gioni. New Skin brings together key pieces – from Italians Piero Manzoni and Penone to New York-based Urs Fischer and Joe Bradley, Palestinian Mona Hatoum and Lebanese Ziad Antar. Gioni's themes draw from contemporary art's tendency towards abstraction and formal studies driven by IT and new media.

• For more details, visit www.aishti.com