Italian architect Alberto Catalano of Teknoarch has won the international competition to design Lebanon’s new Arts and Culture House.

Catalano beat a large and competitive field of international firms, ateliers and individual architects with his design, earning a $75,000 prize and a commission for the project.

Funded by a $20 million gift from the Sultanate of Oman, the House of Arts and Culture will the first of its kind in Beirut. The expected completion date is early 2013.

The House has long been envisioned as an essential public space for the cultivation of Lebanon’s vibrant artistic community, which has, for over a century, been at the vanguard of regional artistic and cultural movements. And last week’s announcement was an important step toward the realization of the ambitious goal to revitalize Lebanon’s public endowment in the artistic sphere.

The competition’s second and third place prizes went to Beatriz Ramo Lopez de Angulo with STAR strategies+architecture from The Netherlands and Grigoryan Yury with Project Meganom from Russia.

Images: Alberto Catalano