by Selina Denman

I am not trying to say anything. But at the same time, I am trying to say everything." So claims industrial designer Karen ­Chekerdjian, encapsulating within a single quote the ambiguity that lies at the centre of her work.

Chekerdjian, who’s arguably Lebanon’s most successful design export, is currently the subject of an exhibition at Paris’s ­Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World ­Institute). Founded in 1980, the IMA is a collaboration between 18 Arab countries and France, envisaged as a means of promoting cultural understanding of the Arab world. Chekerdjian readily admits to having been entirely shaped by the country she calls home, so it’s entirely fitting that she should be showing here.

At the heart of the exhibition is a movie that Chekerdjian has made about Beirut. “It shows my daily life, my kids, my friends. It’s an opportunity to see Beirut through my eyes. And the message is that you cannot put all Arabic countries in the same bag," she tells me. “The movie was very important. My work has nothing to do with ­Europe, or with other countries in the region. It is very specific to Beirut."

While it’s difficult to imagine her doing anything else, it took a while for Chekerdjian to find her calling. Her trajectory into product and furniture design was, she admits, “unsystematic". Born in Beirut in 1970, she started her career in advertising, working in film and graphic design at Leo Burnett ­Beirut, before going on to co-found her own branding company. “I did a lot of different things, from directing movies to graphic design," she explains. “But I felt like I needed more."

By BEN HUBBARD and HWAIDA SAAD

AL QAA, Lebanon — The mourners packed the vast hall behind the Mar Elias Church and crowded around five white coffins, some clutching flowers or photographs of the dead. A marching band struck up a dirge, and relatives of the deceased raised their arms, wailing and swaying with the rhythm.

Outside, armored vehicles rumbled through the streets, and soldiers, police officers and militiamen stood on rooftops and guarded intersections, seeking on Wednesday to prevent further catastrophe from striking this ordinarily sleepy, predominantly Christian town.

Two days earlier, two waves of suicide bombers — four who carried out nearly simultaneous attacks in the morning and four who attacked in close succession in the evening — had blown themselves up here, killing five men and wounding dozens.

The attacks were a new, terrifying spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria, and they fractured the tenuous coexistence that had developed in Al Qaa and beyond between Lebanese residents and the Syrians who have flooded their towns seeking refuge from the violence at home.

here's no place like home, especially when home is a multi-million dollar urban condominium complex that runs entirely off the grid.

Sol-Lux Alpha is an ultra-luxe residence coming to San Francisco that generates its own power via rooftop solar panels and cuts down heating and cooling energy costs up to 90% through efficient design.

Upon completion later this year, the four-family structure will be so energy efficient, it could change the way buildings are constructed in San Francisco, if not the rest of the country.

"We feel this is a building model of the future," John Sarter, a developer at Off the Grid Design, LLC, tells Tech Insider. "We have the power ... to be participants in the [energy] system, not just consumers, but producers."