Roots - A creative approach on Beirut

Roots

‫جذور‬

june 2018

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A CREATIVE APPROACH ON BEIRUT

coastline spaces

BOU CHEBL LARA & FERNEINI MURIEL

‫الكورنيش‬

The « corniche » is the only public space in Beirut that people really enjoy and use with no imposed conditions. It gathers a diversity of people, from runners to fishermen and wanderers. But what makes it so special? Is it just its interaction with the sea? We asked for people’s opinions and if they could, what would they change.

This project is an assembly of four users’ points of view.

Trying to improve the quality of this public space based on the following parameters: the vegetation, the high rise buildings, the connection to the sea and the different users. Accordingly, we imagined punctual interventions on urban furniture.

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3 COASTLINE SPACES

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BOU CHEBL LARA & FERNEINI MURIEL

5 COASTLINE SPACES

SAIMA ZAIDI

The Olive Trail

‫درب الزيتون‬ 6

7 THE OLIVE TRAIL

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SAIMA ZAIDI

9 THE OLIVE TRAIL

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SAIMA ZAIDI

11 THE OLIVE TRAIL

inspired by research of Sergej Schellen ‘Chairing Spaces’

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Streetlife

‫حياة الشوارع‬ 691

CATHERINE SCHENK-YGLESIAS

(14.38%) of 4,805 victims wounded were in Beirut

616

(17.18%) of 3,585 total road traffic accidents nationally occurred in Beirut

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(4.87%) of 472 victims killed nationally in traffic accidents were in Beirut

* statistics are from 2016

Road injury ranks as the 3rd cause of premature death in years of life lost (YLL) in Lebanon.

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According to published central government statistics, in 2017, the total population of Lebanon was

6,082,000.

87.8%

of people lived in urban areas, with a total of

2,226,500

living in the capital city, Beirut.

1.99 million

people living in Lebanon were international migrants, and over

1 million

of these were considered displaced persons or refugees.

This sidewalk in SODECO, Beirut, blocked by cars, left no safe place for pedestrians to walk on this afternoon in mid-June 2018.

According to the General Directorate of Internal Security Forces, 8% of accidents in 2016 were due to pedestrians not abiding by rules of crossing the road.

22% of the vehicles in 2016 traffic accidents in Lebanon were motorcycles. In Sodeco and throughout Lebanese streets and highways, one often sees people riding motorcycles without wearing helmets.

According to a strategy document recently released by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, “the enhancement of health status depends not only on the development of health services, but on improvement of the social determinants of health, such as poverty, unemployment and illiteracy.�

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Narghile

‫نارجيلة‬ CATHERINE SCHENK-YGLESIAS

The WHO has found that waterpipe use is a significant and growing proportion of tobacco use globally.

Sweetened, flavored waterpipe tobacco is called maassel, which is made via the fermentation of tobacco with molasses, glycerin and fruit essence. Studies have shown that users are attracted by the aromatic smell, the smooth taste of the smoke and the bubbling sound of water.

The typical user smokes in one-hour sessions during which she or he draws a level of toxicants ranging from less than 1 to tens of cigarettes.

There is still a widespread misperception that waterpipe tobacco smoking is safer than cigarette smoking.

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According to the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, use of waterpipe tobacco products was more frequent than cigarette smoking among children aged 13-15 in all 17 countries of the MENA Region. Use increased from 13.3% to 18.9% among young people from 2008 to 2010.

Unlike cigarettes, waterpipe products are usually sold with no health warning.

Waterpipe smoking has thrived in the wake of strict tobacco control policies and regulations that are mostly cigaretteoriented.

Second-hand waterpipe smoke: On a smoker-hour basis, waterpipe smoking results in higher concentrations of respirable particulate matter than cigarette smoking.

NARGHILE

The MENA Region still has the highest prevalence of waterpipe use in the world.

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ANTHONY SALIBA

Beirut?

Chaos and order were once siblings.

Whatever, we are still in their ancestors phase.

Beirut, 28th june 2018

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BEIRUT?

‫وين بيروت‬

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ANTHONY SALIBA

21 BEIRUT?

Missing piece Zokak el-Blat

JULIANE TÜBKE

‫زقاق لبالط‬ ‫قطعة مفقودة‬

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During the workshop Mapping the City I interviewed Ghassan Maasri, who founded Mansion in 2012 as a multi-purpose collective space, situated in the Quarter of Zokak el-Blat.

Mansion is a grand villa from the 1930s, where you can still find architectural surfaces from the 30s. After the meeting with Ghassan I went back to the building to adhere the paper to a portion of the wall that had been cut away for a study on the building’s sustainability and reveals a former hidden piece of history. With this technique I produce a perfect copy of the surface. I am going to use this imprint to create a new wall fragment on the base of this imprint.

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MISSING PIECE ZOKAK EL-BLAT

Over the last years I’ve been occupied with one set of questions - this interest in understanding my surroundings through materials and surfaces and how to approach these materials. The basis for my work is a paper technique that is used in archaeology to take imprints of rock inscriptions.

This kind of paper was originally used to record texts that have been carved by people onto stones. I use this imprinting technique in several ways to explore the qualities of various stone surfaces.

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JULIANE TÜBKE

MISSING PIECE ZOKAK EL-BLAT

‘Mansion’

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SERVAG DERGHOUGASSIAN

Musikistan

‫الموسيقستان‬ 28

29 RACKETS

art space

Art Lab

‫وين بيروت‬

AYMAN KASSEM

The concentration of the cultural and the artsy activities of the local creative communities.

The main galleries and museums in Gemayzeh, Mar Mekhayel and Sursock . It is the creative\ culture heart of Beirut .

In Lebanon, there is a lack of museums and museums’ culture and a lack of major architectures or spaces for culture exhibitions and art. In this regard, the official governmental support- planning is very weak. In this kind of scenarios, with a good amount of democracy but with scarce fundings, the low-medium creative class and the cultured communities come to compensate this lack through the transformation of abandoned and donated spaces in Beirut into “white cube” art galleries. Some of these “whitecubized” spaces (re-used and renovated as galleries) became very successful acting as cultural hubs for international and local artists and events, supporting future local potentials. The reuse of these spaces is helping to preserve and conserve some damaged historical buildings.

These spaces became able to compete in terms of attraction with some other prestigious art spaces owned by the high rich creative class. The concentration of these spaces in some areas of Beirut - near and around the few official big museums- make them well networked which is giving the areas an “artsy” “museumized” aspect, more like culture oasis for locals and their international guests.

The concentration of most of the art spaces, the cultural and the artsy activities of the local creative communities in the connected\nearby areas of Gemmayzeh, Mar Mekhayel and Sursock makes it seems them as one main creative\ culture heart of Beirut .

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Art on Spears

392Rmeil393

Beirut art center Art on 56th

ART SPACES

Art on Spears

Density of art galleries and museums Most of the art galleries are concentrated in the area of Gemayzeh, Mar Mekhayel and Sursock

Art Lab Beirut art center

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The 8th Beirut

NOUR HABIB & MELINA JAFARIAN

‫بيروت الثامنة‬ Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, often called the Paris of the Middle East, during the French mandate there have been many attempts to organize the city’s urban design taking inspiration from the French cities design, mostly Paris.

Although the endeavor to organize Beirut city by the French government was a bit of a success in the downtown of Beirut, mostly around la place de l’étoile, it did not lead to the same result in the other districts of Beirut. In some of the districts we can see the difference between the old buildings and the new ones with the spacing between them, the nature of the materials used and their heights. New constructions tend to be more distant from other constructions and the new buildings are more ecological and greener with less energy waste. And so we can say that Beirut is a mix of designs and doesn’t follow a fixed pattern. Which shows Beirut is a city of coexistence, with all types of social classes, religions, culture and history.

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THE 8 TH BEIRUT ABOUT THE POLLUTION: In the past three years, Lebanon has been suffering from a garbage crisis. Waste management has always been an issue in Lebanon with its roots leading back to political disagreement between the leading parties.

For months, the reek of rotting garbage hung over Beirut. At one point, a ridge of white garbage bags snaked several km along the city’s main river before being finally removed.

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NOUR HABIB & MELINA JAFARIAN

Why this shape of the city? We deided to show the two faces of the city. As you can see the city is divided in districts around La place de l’Êtoile, a utopian French dream.

But as you look closer we see the chaos in the city due to all the problems on different levels, where you see the disorder between the old and the new, the high and the low, with no urban design, the reality of this city.

Why bottle caps? In our project we decided to show an 8th Beirut made of water bottle caps, to symbolize the trash and because none of the proposed solutions to the garbage crisis involve recycling even though it is the easiest and best solution especially bottle caps recycling. They are so abundant that we can create a city out of them.

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37 THE 8 TH BEIRUT

Crane virus

MARIAM BOU FADEL

‫فيروس الرافعة‬

Crane Monitor

LONE WOLF 38

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Construction will always be about people.

Look up!!!

CRANE VIRUS

ENSURING THE NEXT GENERATION

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MARIAM BOU FADEL

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CRANE VIRUS

Developers are speculating the dice about the real estate market values in Beiruts’ neighborhoods.

This maps shows the variation in real estate commercial and residential in Beirut, and the spatial distribution of cranes currently in operation

inspired by research of Sergej Schellen ‘Chairing Spaces’

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During the Beirut Design Week 2018 creatives explored the neighbourhoods of Beirut. The participants developed themes and concepts referring to the city based on social issues, personal experiences and its visual language.

Design thinking, design skills, and public participation are key tools and drivers for this project. They are all used as the methodology to explore, analyze, visualize and respond to the neighbourhood’s life and its people. The workshop aims to encourage social change-makers within this community.

Once sensitised to their social and cultural context, participants are encouraged to take an active and responsible role towards a complex urban environment they live and work in.

The social design workshop is an initiative from andrews:degen, a research-based graphic design agency located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The workshop ‘Mapping the city - A creative approach on...’ has already been conducted in more than 25 different cities around the world. For all the results please visit www.mappingthecity.com.

We would like to thank the Goethe-Institut in Beirut, the Beirut Design Week and Public Work Studio for making this workshop happen.