Within months of graduating with high distinction from the LAU School of Architecture and Design and receiving the Torch Award—one of the university’s highest student honors recognizing leadership, volunteerism, commitment and ethical conduct—Lynn Nasr (BArch ’25) established herself as a thoughtful and innovative voice in contemporary architecture. Her time at LAU combined rigorous academic training with opportunities to explore the social and civic dimensions of design, laying the groundwork for work that resonates beyond the classroom.

This foundation led to international recognition in December 2025, when Nasr was shortlisted for the World’s Top Architecture Graduation Projects by the Tamayouz Excellence Award, an annual international competition dedicated to advancing architectural education. The distinction is especially significant given the scale of this year’s competition, which drew 949 submissions from 185 universities worldwide. Projects were assessed for their ability to address both local and global challenges with transformative, context-aware design solutions.

Nasr’s shortlisted project, “Invisible Beirut: The Civic Continuum in Adlieh,” supervised by Associate Professor Maroun Daccache, envisions a civic, cultural and judicial forum in Adlieh area in Beirut. It reimagines the area as a contemporary agora, reclaiming a district long dominated by infrastructure and authority as a space for gathering, expression and collective belonging.

“Being shortlisted is a meaningful recognition of a project deeply shaped by LAU’s culture of critical design and civic engagement,” Nasr said, “an environment that encouraged me to explore architecture as a space for justice, memory and public life.”

The design draws attention to the unseen forces shaping the city—displacement, informal occupation, and hidden infrastructures—while establishing a new civic network linking the Palace of Justice, the National Museum, and surrounding neighborhoods. Its key interventions—a public piazza facing the Palace of Justice, with underground pedestrian connections, a Justice Memory Museum, and a vertical courtroom tower—together create a transparent and accessible urban landmark, transforming Adlieh into a shared civic heart.

Complementing her academic and design achievements, Nasr attended the Politecnico di Torino in Italy during the Spring 2024 semester supported by an Erasmus grant, through LAU’s International Services and Programs Office, where she gained valuable cross-cultural perspectives that further shaped her approach to architecture.