Postulates of Architecture Drawings by Carla Aramouny

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Editor Carla Aramouny

Designer

Karim Farah Arab Architects Awards (AAA) 2018 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ArD Exhibition curators: Carla Aramouny, Etienne Bastormaji, Mohamad Nahle with the assistance of Lana Barakeh. Special thanks to Carol Moukheiber, Zeina Koreitem, and Etienne Bastormaji, for their valuable contributions to this publication, and to the Department of Architecture and Design, professors Mona Harb and Howayda Al Harithy, for their crucial support in making this publication possible.

American University of Beirut Department of Architecture and Design

POSTULATES OF ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS edited by Carla Aramouny

PREFACE

This publication from the Department of Architecture and Design (ArD) compiles and presents a matrix of architecture students’ drawings previously displayed in the exhibition, “Postulates of Architecture Drawings”. The exhibition was presented during the 2018 Arab Architects Awards event, organized by the Order of Engineers and Architects in Beirut, and was curated by Carla Aramouny (Assistant Professor), Etienne Bastormaji (Lecturer), and Mohamad Nahle (Research assistant). It reflected upon the renewed role of drawing as a thinking tool in the architecture academic sphere. The curators selected a series of student work that showcases this critical role of drawing, from select representation track courses within the architecture curriculum, to final year thesis projects that articulate research through drawing. Through the curated work and associated courses, this publication presents a trajectory of analytical and experimental drawings, currently evolving within the architecture program at ArD.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION Postulates of Architecture Drawings Carla Aramouny 6 On Representation Zeina Koreitem It’s All About Representation! Carol Moukheiber

8 10

Drawing as craft ARCH 112 Drawing II

Nicolas Fayad, Etienne Bastormaji, Alia Bader | Spring 2018 Myriam Abou Adal, Marcelle Fayad, Yara Haidar, Amir Moujaes, Lea Tabaja

ARCH 313 Digital Tools

Roland Nasr, Alia Bader | Fall 2018 Mahmoud Fahs, Aya Meskaoui Haya Al Safadi, Hiba Rachidi Lama Barhoumi, Karim Rifai Lea Saad, Jana Semaan Yara Abdallah, Kamar El Ali Salameh Abla

Projects from the Azar Awards Competition 2018

Carla Aramouny | Fall 2017 Hilal Bou Ali, Helena Homsi, Mohamad Nahle / Mia Dibe, Mario Khoury, Reem Nassour / Mira Al Jawahiry, Ibrahim Kombarji, Nayla Saniour

Bourj Pavilion | Fall 2018 Christina Battikha Amina Kassem Nayla Saniour

Drawing as a research medium

Drawing as analytical/ explorative tool ARCH 031 On Housing

ARCH 015 Micro Devices

Carol Moukheiber | Fall 2017 Christina Battikha, Hilal Bou Ali, Sabine Doueiry, Manar El Khatib, Tamara Salloum, Christelle Hallak, Shada Mustafa

ARCH 508/509 Architecture Design Thesis Fall/Spring 2017-2018

Mohamad Nahle – 185 En-counters in Karm El-Zeitoun Reem Nassour - You, my other Self Racha Doughman - A Prey at Pray, a cosmic irony Karen Madi - Edge Effect: Design for Eco-Activism Ibrahim Kombarji - recto/verso Lea Ramadan - The Labyrinth, a topological exploration of the Salima Serail Mira Al Jawahiry - Be Right Back Serge Saab - Colony Sentinels of Toxic Territories Sally Itani - On the Borders of Transience Karim Hamouie - Between the Citadel and Souks//Aleppo Syria Lana Barakeh - I Took a Ship Sarine Vosgueritchian - The Poetics of Rubble: The In[dust]rial Re[in]carnation of Gyumri

Drawing is a Verb Etienne Bastormagi

100

Postulates of Architecture Drawings Carla Aramouny

Carla Aramouny is an architect and assistant professor at the American University of Beirut, Department of Architecture and Design (ArD). She has a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Lebanese American University. Carla has practiced architecture in several renowned offices in Beirut and New York, and now develops her own design work in parallel to her academic work. Her research and teaching involve themes of landscape and architecture integration, hybrid infrastructures, digital craft, and recent shifts in architecture representation. She is also founder and director of ArD’s TechLab, a digital design and fabrication unit.

| POSTULATES OF ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS

In the last decade, a resurgence of drawing and drawing experiments has been increasingly taking shape in the architecture field, within and outside of the academic sphere. Drawing, an essential architecture medium, is being reconsidered today as architecture’s fundamental output, recognized not only as a representation tool with a descriptive aim but more essentially as an experimental design tool that conveys thought, process, desires, and sensibility. Mohsen Mostafavi1, architect and educator, relates the architecture endeavor to that of the novelist, and reflects on the architect’s creative process as relying on a method of manifestation presented through a set of drawing conventions. However, Mostafavi moves the role of drawing away from the sole purpose of “actualizing the building” into in itself becoming a conceptual device, in his words a “drawn idea”. Sam Jacob furthermore considers that architecture representation has today moved towards a post-digital era. In his essay, “Architecture Enters the Age of Post-Digital Drawing”2, he reflects upon the revival of drawing as an exploratory craft through creative use of digital media, moving strictly away from and in reaction to the trend of mundane and realistic representations. Current endeavors in architecture representation bear a witness to that, with works like those by Design Earth, The Open Workshop, KGDVS, among others. These current explorations in drawing show its revival as both a speculative and explorative tool, as one that embodies and historizes previous techniques. Such digital experiments in etching, collage, and composite

projections, reference historical methods and approaches in representation, and show influences from pop art, utopic collages of the 60s, 18th century Enlightenment radical representations and others. Such endeavors have re-positioned the role of drawing to be again the architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essential output and mode of translation. With these shifts in mind and the current evolution of digital techniques, a reflection on drawing as a craft that involves both digital and analog tools is essential. In this exhibit and publication, the Department of Architecture and Design at AUB presents a series of student work produced across different studios and courses of Architecture. Within each project and sheet, drawing is centralized as a cumulative thought process, conveying the entirety of the idea in a single representation. The intent is not to present projects per say but rather a matrix of ideas through drawing, highlighting its expanding capacity to encompass technique, meaning, and intention. The selection of drawings here thus builds upon several courses in the program, including courses in the Representation track, such as Drawing and Digital Tools, in addition to main architecture electives that focus on drawing and representation as analytical and explorative devices. The selection also highlights drawings from the final year thesis of the class of 2018, reflecting upon their fundamental role in the conception and manifestation of every project.

1 Mohsen Mostafavi, The Cartographic Imagination, in Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary, Jill Desimini & Charles Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2016), p. 6-7 2 Sam Jacob, Architecture Enters the Age of PostDigital Drawing, article in Metropolis Magazine, March 21, 2017 <https://www.metropolismag. com/architecture/architecture-enters-age-postdigital-drawing>

On Representation Zeina Koreitem

Zeina Koreitem is founding partner in MILLIØNS, a Los Angeles-based architecture and design practice. She is Design Faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles and a Design Critic in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Zeina holds a B.Arch from the American University of Beirut, where she received the AREEN Project Award of Excellence in Architecture, and the Distinguished Young Alumni Award (2019); an M.Arch II from the University of Toronto; and an MDes in Design Computation from Harvard GSD, where she received the Daniel L. Schodek Award for Technology. www.millionsarchitecture.com

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We can start with a very simple reality: Architects work “representation-ally.” Which is to say, in general we are not able to work directly on our final built objects, but instead use various media to translate our ideas into physical things in the world. When we produce drawings or images, they are our primary medium of expression, and yet, paradoxically, they usually exist only to establish an indexical relationship to the objects (material or imagined) they represent. Even the most experimental acts of architectural representation always “point to” or reference something beyond themselves. Robin Evans articulated this clearly as the “translational” dimension of architectural representation. Evans, explains that Architecture breaks with visual art along the gap between representation and realization—that gap where the architectural image, unlike the artistic image, must live two lives at once: one as an image, and one as an indexical precursor to an as-yet unrealized object. Nearly all architectural experimentation has historically resided in that gap.1 Over the past three decades the architectural process has been drastically reorganized by what historian Jonathan Crary calls “a transformation in the nature of visuality probably more profound than the break that separates medieval imagery from Renaissance perspective.”2 Architecture’s previously stable graphical conventions have dissolved and been replaced with an ever expanding repertoire of computational mediums, originally not designed for the architectural imagination. If we acknowledge that architecture has for centuries produced new ideas

and forms by treating representation as a space of exploration, how might techniques that belong to computational media—which so often seem to prioritize “workflow optimization” at the expense of representational experimentation—be made to serve this same experimental function? Any such inquiry entails imagining and testing methods by which computational image making might be at times used to disrupt the smooth workflows which presently define digital fabrication culture. It also involves thinking carefully about how the history of form and tectonics—which architectural drawing managed so well for centuries— might be preserved and extended within the paradigm of these new digital media. The work we produce in my practice MILLIØNS, is interested in an expansion and revision of the notion of “digital representation” in architecture. Today, architecture is caught between two competing subcultures of imaging, each of which has different priorities with respect to new tools and media. On the one hand there is a culture of rendering, in which the image is basically regarded as an “output,” or end product, often for promotional ends. On the other hand, there is a culture of fabrication, in which computer images are used only to accurately and efficiently simulate or imitate numerical-material processes. The driving force of our work with computer graphics is: how can we gain control over image processes, and how can they be integrated into architectural experimentation? How can a computer image become a kind of translational object, or indexical surface, rather than just an efficient instrument or a polished

output? How might one work with images rather than simply on images? What might be the consequences of such an approach for processes of materialization and assembly, and for all the questions that typically go by the name “tectonics?”3

1 Robin Evans, “Architectural Projection,” in Architecture and Its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation, eds. Eve Blau and Edward Kaufman (Cambridge: MIT, 1989), 19-35.; Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essay (Cambridge: MIT, 1997), 15.  2 Crary continues: “The rapid development in a little more than a decade of a vast array of computer graphics techniques is part of a sweeping reconfiguration of relations between an observing subject and modes of representation that effectively nullifies most of the culturally established meaning of the terms observer and representation.” Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1990. 3 For more on Zeina Koreitem’s work on images and Computer Graphics in Architecture, see https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/becomingdigital/248077/some-notes-on-making-imageswith-computers/

It’s All About Representation! Carol Moukheiber

Carol Moukheiber is Assistant Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. She has taught at the American University of Beirut, the California College of the Arts and UC Berkeley. Her office, Studio (n-1), works with playful attention on projects traversing different scales from urban design, architecture, and building assemblies to domestic objects. The studio is the recipient of the Architectural League of New York Emerging Voices 2012 award. Publications include The Living, Breathing, Thinking Responsive Buildings of the Future [Thames & Hudson 2012] and Wild Wild Urbanism, Redesigning California [CCA 2006].

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Drawing is a way of thinking… I’m not trying to represent something; I’m trying to make it real. And the only way it can be real is through my drawings. -- Peter Eisenman As Robin Evans reminds us in Translations from Drawing to Building, the architect’s immediate output is the drawing not the actual building. Unlike a painter or a sculptor who engages directly with their object of thought -- the painting, the sculpture -- the architect is almost always working with some form of representation, or a mediator like the drawing or the model.1 Whether guided by a master’s skillfully knife-sharpened wood pencil, or augmented by our advanced digital tools, drawings are what we construct. From sketch to construction drawings, drawing is our first and last act. It may also be that with immersive technologies, drawings will be what we ultimately inhabit. There are of course different kinds of drawings, and each technique brings to bear its own mode of forming and informing the world from which it emerged. For Erwin Panofsky, the development of linear perspective in the Italian Renaissance – with its illusory consistency and stability of space – embodied nothing less than a fundamental philosophical rupture from the preceding, more discontinuous Medieval modes of apprehending the world. In other words, representational techniques mirror and shape our worldview, or how we process and structure reality.2 Whether it is a napkin sketch, a diagram, a perspective, an orthographic projection, a collage or montage, a rendering, or an animation,

each type posits a certain posture and mode of perception. Architecture’s current reinvestment in drawing comes partly as a backlash against the anonymity and frictionless world of the computer generated rendering, the money-shot. This undifferentiated stream of images asks nothing of us beyond the quick consumption of the object. More importantly, at their worst, far from being potential futures, they appear as perfectly boring worlds. What characterizes some of the most exciting drawings today is their strangeness. A deliberate strangeness that allows new insights, or new ways of seeing; they build a narrative, a point of view. These drawings, like more advanced models of their 20th century predecessors, are precise constructions -- like Le Corbusier’s interior scenography with its use of props such as raw fish on the kitchen counter, indicating the imminent use of the space. They challenge their medium’s inherent biases, interrogate context, set scenes, provoke an effect, in short alter our perception and refigure our view of the world. Here the drawing can be truly seen “as the locale of subterfuges and evasions that one way or another get round the enormous weight of convention that has always been architecture’s greatest security and at the same time is greatest liability.”3 In both teaching and practice, we have attempted to use drawing as an analytical and generative tool. In the sampling of student work shown in this publication, the close reading of housing typologies through drawing is an opportunity to learn how to see and think. The drawings produced allowed

us to recognize typological migrations, transfers, and mutations across buildings. We understood among others things, dimensional relationships, strategies of access, and the shifting relationships between private and public. Without drawing we are blind.

1 Robin Evans, Translations from drawing to Building and Other Essays. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 160. 2 Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. C. S. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 41. 3 Evans, Translations, 186.

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The selection of work presented here revolves around three main thematics, which outline main approaches to representation within the Architecture studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work at ArD: Drawing as Craft, Drawing as Analytical/ Explorative tool, and Drawing as Research. These three reflections also constitute a connection to the representation track in the program structure, which is manifested through several courses; in core courses of drawing that impart technique and conventions and present drawing as a craft, in advanced representation seminars that conceptualize and theorize drawing as an analytical and explorative tool that supports their studio work, and in the final year where research, design, and representation coalesce into a developed design thesis.

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DRAWING AS CRAFT This theme reflects on drawing as both a technique and craft that involves the mastering of tools, whether analog or digital, and that connects drawing to conceptualization. In a sense, it can be seen as similar to understanding drawing as Disegno, as encompassing both technique and idea. Drawings selected under this theme present the work done in the core representation courses that cross technique with concept, moving back and forth between analog and digital media to result in meaningful and concurrent modes of representations.

Drawing II Digital tools

ARCH 112 - DRAWING II Instructors Nicolas Fayad, Etienne Bastormaji, and Alia Bader Students Myriam Abou Adal, Marcelle Fayad, Yara Haidar, Amir Moujaes, Lea Tabaja

In Drawing II, various modes and techniques of drawing conventions are explored and presented through the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work. The students learn to work with the different conventions, from perspective, sketching, to axonometric and composite 2D projections. The courseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach is to bridge between the digital and analog modes of representation early on, understanding digital representation as an extension of hands-on and analog techniques in drawing and design. Exercises that overlap digital and analog techniques are developed by the students, using both drawing and physical models as modes of representation.

Yara Haidar and Lea Tabaja

| POSTULATES OF ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS

Myriam Abou Adal

Lea Tabaja

| ARCH 112 - DRAWING II

Marcelle Fayad and Amir Moujaes

ARCH 313 DIGITAL TOOLS Instructors Roland Nasr, Alia Bader Students Mahmoud Fahs, Aya Meskaoui / Haya Al Safadi, Hiba Rachidi / Lama Barhoumi, Karim Rifai / Lea Saad, Jana Semaan / Yara Abdallah, Kamar El Ali / Salameh Abla, Mahmoud Fahs

This course is the third in a sequence of core representation courses and allows students to develop their digital skills through learning advanced tools and applying them through critical analysis. Some of the drawings selected here convey work that explores and understands well-known architecture projects through digital composites that reflect their idea and design approach. Others present explorations in topographic projections and 3D terrain modelling, developed as 2D representations.

20 | POSTULATES OF ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS

Lea Saad | Jana Semaan Madrid-Barajas Airport, Estudio Lamela & Rogers Stirk Harbour

Mahmoud Fahs | Salameh Abla Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Herzog & De Meuron

Haya El Safadi | Hiba Rachidi Reichstag, Norman Foster

22 | ARCH 313 DIGITAL TOOLS

Yara Abdallah | Kamar El Ali Basilica Harissa, Pierre El Khoury

Mahmoud Fahs | Aya Meskaoui Topography study inspired by Design Earth

24 | ARCH 313 DIGITAL TOOLS

Karim Rifai | Lama Barhoumi Topography study

26 | POSTULATES OF ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS

DRAWING AS ANALYTICAL / EXPLORATIVE TOOL This theme positions drawing as an analytical and explorative device through a focus on select representation seminars. In this selection, drawing is approached as a tool for investigating and revealing, for connecting method and understanding, to analysis and interpretation. Furthermore, part of the selection also includes a series of drawings presented during a department competition, which show the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experiments in drawing for speculation.

On Housing Micro Devices Projects from the Azar Awards

ARCH 031 ON HOUSING Instructor Carol Moukheiber Students Christina Battikha, Hilal Bou Ali, Sabine Doueiry, Manar El Khatib, Tamara Salloum, Christelle Hallak, Shada Mustafa

The work produced in the seminar On Housing uses drawing as an analytical device for studying, dissecting, and presenting housing typologies through a series of case-studies. Through drawings, types are understood as distinct architectural inventions that are open to change and mutation. Drawing is further understood as a tool for the dissemination of knowledge, and for revealing type relationships. Deliberate use of exploded and sectional axonometric reveals the imbedded structural and organizational principles within each type. The studied housing typologies cover row, bar, slab, block, tower courtyard, mat, and terrace, with case studies by several renowned architects. Questions related to the shifting boundaries between private and public, changing demographics, work/live patterns, atmosphere, climatic response, collective living, and affordable housing were addressed through the transformations of type.

28 | POSTULATES OF ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS

Hilal Bou Ali

Sabine Doueiri and Shada Mustapha

Christina Battikha

30 | ARCH 031 ON HOUSING

Christelle Hallak

Tamara Salloum

| ARCH 031 ON HOUSING

Manar El Khatib

ARCH 015 MICRO DEVICES Pamphlet on Local Infrastructure and Representation Instructor Carla Aramouny Students Hilal Bou Ali, Helena Homsi, Mohamad Nahle / Mia Dibe, Mario Khoury, Reem Nassour / Mira Al Jawahiry, Ibrahim Kombarji, Nayla Saniour

Through the work produced in the seminar Micro Devices, students use composite drawings, overlays, mappings, and observational representations to research an infrastructural theme and propose speculative visions. The drawings become central not only as descriptive and analytical tools to synthesize data but also as projective devices that illustrate and argue for an alternative proposal for that infrastructure. In this selection, the drawings presented tackle the subject of transportation, and the Northern section of the main highway leading to Beirut. Each project is presented in two sheets, as two sides of a single distributable pamphlet that compiles ideas and reflections on transportation. The pamphlet becomes a visual document that helps advocate for change through visualization.

34 | POSTULATES OF ARCHITECTURE DRAWINGS

Hilal Bou Ali, Helena Homsi, Mohamad Nahle

FILTERING AGGRESSION A study of the costal highway from Beirut to Narh el Kalb ARCH 015 / micro devices by Hilal Bou Ali / Helena Homsi / Mohamad Nahleh

Experiencing the highway through a different lense has allowed us to notice certain aspects of it that are not clear otherwise. The effect of the cast shadows on the street impacts traffic flow, user behavior and the functionality of the highway itself. Our proposal acts directly on the coastal highway and tackles issues of shading, lack of pedestrian crossings, and the aggressive behavior of drivers due to high temperatures during the summer season.

Fig. 1

(N=20)

(N=10)

1.5

360

Number of car crashes

Time spent honking (seconds)

(N=5)

(N=15)

2.0

(N=10) 1.0

0.5

340 320 300 280 260 240 220 200 180 160 140 120 100

(N=15) 86-90

Fig. 2

91-95

96-100

Jn Fb Mr Ap Ma Ju Jl Au Sp Oc No De Jn Fb Mr Ap Ma Ju Jl Au Sp Oc

101-105 106-110 111-115

Temperature Humidity Discomfort Index

Fig. 3

2016

2017

Fig. 7

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

Fig. 1 A series of photographs on the eastern side of the h i g h w a y , from Beirut to Nahr el Kalb, shows a superposition

Fig. 6

of shaded and lit areas in a framed composition. the narrative of the drive can be read through the different nuances.

Fig. 2 Ambient Temperature and Horn Honking / A fielf of study of the Heat/Aggression Relationship by Douglas T. Kenrick and Steven W. MacFarlane . Using a method developed in previous field studies of aggression, this study examinated

36 | ARCH 015 MICRO DEVICES

the influence of ambient temperature on responses to a car stopped at a green light. To investigate alternative models of the effects of high temperature on interpersonal hostility, the study was conducted during the spring and summer in Phoenix, Arizona, and included a range of the temperature

humidity discomfort index up to 116Â°. Results indicated a direct linear increase in horn honking with increasing temperature. Stronger results were obtained by examining only those subjects who had their windows rolled down (and presumably did not have air conditioners operating).

Fig. 3: The graph represents the number of car crashes per month according to kunhadi.orgâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s numbers. We can note the peaks in crashes during the summer months (June and July), as the numbers drop rapidly during the winter.

Fig. 4: This diagram is a shadow analysis simulation showing the respective exposure of areas to sun during 12 hours of the day. Overlaid on it, is a diagram showing traffic congestion zones throughout.

Fig. 5: This map illustrates the different shadows cast by the buildings adjacent to the highway at 08:00 am, 02:00 pm and 07:00pm on the hottest summer day, and highlights specific zones where the sun continuously hits.

Fig. 6: In order to propose a beneficial intervention on the highway, we began by highlighting the longest un-shaded strips. The goal was to fill the shaded areas and add different elements and programs to activate the highway.

Fig. 7: The shadows at 08:00am shade part of the eastern highway and none of the western side. Fig. 8: The highway at 02:00pm is entirely lit,

with no cast shadows from the surroudning buildings. Fig.9: The shadows of the afternoon at 06:00pm cast long shadows on the western side of the highway.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 8

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 9

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Fig. 1 The top view of the first part of the intervention acts as a playground in an empty site. It promotes all kinds of social interaction throughout users of different age groups while also doubling as a pedestrian bridge to get from one side to the other.

Fig. 2 The top view of the second part of the intervention acts as a buffer zone between the buildings and the very busy highway. It allows the possibility to plant a vertical garden that would then cast organic shadows on the highway, as opposed

to blocks and the geometric shapes of the buildings, which studies have shown allow for a pleasant drive through. Fig. 3 The top view of the third part of the intervention acts also as a pedestrian bridge and has the ability to convert its units

into shops, temporary drive thrus, bus stops, safe waiting zones, or any program that would enhance the experience of the user on the highway, whether driving or not. Fig. 4 The elevation of the first part of the intervention

starts as a playground then formalistically morphs into a bridge, all the while allowing for vehicles to pass form underneath it. It also disintegrates to offer seating to its users. Fig. 5 The elevation

the

second

part of the intervention represents a buffer zone which also allows for access to the secondary streets. Fig. 6 The elevation of the third part of the intervention curves into a pedestrian path and also allows for traffic flow.

Fig. 7 The elevation of the entire highway with the intervention depicts the new organic forms dominating the street all the while shading from direct sunrays while activating social relations. The intervention helps create a new city scape for the costal highway.

Fig. 8 The top view of the highway with the intervention clearly shows the cast shadows on the street and surrounding. The new organic shadows impact the user behavior, promote social interaction and tackles specific issues of the Beirut - Jounieh highway.

Fig. 9 A snapshot of the highway with the organic structure illustrates the primary goal of the intervention: to tackle the issue of poor shading on the costal highway that eventually leads to negative behaviors and incidents. The streets are rehabilitated.

The proposal stems from this: The consumer and culture and visual pollution along the highway/commercial strip generates programmatic utility along the highways “aisles”. The obstructing notion of stopping and starting triggers further traffic, in order to park, make use, consume, and proceed. But what if rather than us, as consumers, stopping to park to approach the commercial usability, the commercial process approached us, as it already does with the street vendors, but at a far more adaptable rate.

If we were to continue along these lines and say that: Traffic is constituted by the number of cars within a time frame and their average speed Infrastructure is the appropriated direction and span constructing the urban fabric Commercial is the programmatic dictation along and within the built fabric But if this commercial dimension is not limited to the built fabric, but rather is just as much appropriated and controlled by street vendors, who roam the highway (road) at just the right moments when traffic consistently slows down, then how does this relationship between a moving commercial dimension alter the flow of traffic and in turn, transportation.

CONVEYOR BELT CONCEPT

The dialogue of the proposal constructs itself on the basis that a sequences of micro interventions have a macro consequence. A kind of domino effect, that by decreasing the stopping rate and adding to the moving rate, the flow increases, and traffic potentially decreases. All the while, ironically exaggerating the confrontation with consumerism. The hierarchy shifts. Brandalism takes over the vehicle. The vendor takes over the vehicle. You are consumed by consumerism.

vendor / car interceptions

COMMERCIAL AISLES

scope of interest

conceptual comparison / a city model

consumed(ism) Everywhere we go we are treated as potential consumers. A highway set up as a commercial strip speculates the typology of a highway by questioning the very components that construct a hybrid identity. An identity built on the grounds of the automobile but adjusted and controlled by consumer culture. The commercial strip between the commercial conglomerates, City Mall and Dbayeh, draws out the very instruments of persuasion that construct, shape, and shift the equation of what we could call “our highway”.

If one was to presume the following abbreviations and quantifiable understanding of the infrastructure, components, and consequences within our contextual scope, then: Highway (H) Commercial (C) Traffic (T) Then, could one, in order to question the very components, understand their relationship to one another as:

TEMPORARY STRUCTURE

H+C=T H – C = T? H = T = C? T = C = H?

Mia Dibe, Mario Khoury, Reem Nassour

38 | ARCH 015 MICRO DEVICES

micro bitches

connection to road and pedestrian bridge

envelope

stairs structure

creating an experience

structure

ALB

The project will take advantage of the existing pedestrian bridges. The intervention consists in connecting these bridges to the middle lane, which would become a bus stop. On both sides of the stop run two bus lanes with fixed schedules, one from Beirut to Jounieh and the other in the opposite direction. This creates a fast and efficient alternative to the massive use of cars in Lebanon.

PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE

PARKING

Mira Al Jawahiry, Ibrahim Kombarji, Nayla Saniour

40 | ARCH 015 MICRO DEVICES

time of travel (minutes) 80 75 70 65 60 time of travel (minutes) 55 50 45 40 35

80 75 70

65 30 60 25 55

EQUIVALENT TO

1 BUS

20 CARS

20 50 15 45 10 40 5 35 0 30 25

12AM

4AM

8AM

12PM

4PM

EQUIVALENT

time of the day

8PM

1 BUS

20 CARS

150 20 15

175 10 5

200 225

0 2

actual state of highway. continous median

20m

0 2

100 2

10 20m

public transport. bycicle lane.

0 2

20m 10

20m

0 2

public transport. bus/train.

100 2

10 20m

0 2

20m 10 250 275 300

The project stemmed from an interest in the traffic islands along the highway. As observed, these islands were mostly unexploited. The intervention aims to take advantage of the median strip between Beirut and Jounieh. The strip is transformed into a two-way bus lane that links both cities with several stops along the way. The project would alleviate traffic congestion by reducing travel time and decreasing the number of cars on the highway. It would also reduce pollution rates by providing common means of transportation.

325

12AM

4AM

8AM

12PM

4PM

8PM

time of the day

150 175

PRESENT present FUTURE future

20m

200

car. to Jounieh CARBeirut - BEIRUT TO JOUNIEH car. to Beirut CARJounieh - JOUNIEH TO BEIRUT bus. directions BUS both -PRESENT BOTH DIRECTIONS

225

FUTURE POLLUTION pollution rate RATE

250

CAR - BEIRUT TO JOUNIEH

275 CO2 concentration (g/km/h)

CAR - JOUNIEH TO BEIRUT BUS - BOTH DIRECTIONS

300

POLLUTION RATE 325 CO2 concentration (g/km/h)

public transport. bycicle lane.

BEIRUT

BEIRUT BEIRUT

NAHR EL KALB

MARINA

DAOURA

DAOURA DAOURA

isti

rkin

g lo

DBAYEH

ZALKA

ZALKA ZALKA

ANTELIAS

BEIRUT-JOUNIEH BUS ANTELIAS

DAOURA

station on existing pedestrian bridges

departure nahr el kalb 8:02 am antelias 8:09 PLANNED zalka 8:14 daoura 8:21

PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE

EXISTING PARKING arrival terminus beirut 8:27 am

PLANNED PARKING

NAHR EL KALB

NAHR EL KALB NAHR EL KALB

MARINA

EXISTING PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE

EXISTING PEDESTRIAN PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE BRIDGE PLANNED

EXISTING PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE PLANNED EXISTING PARKING PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE EXISTING

EXISTING PARKING PLANNED EXISTING PARKING

PLANNED PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE EXISTING PARKING PLANNED PARKING PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE PLANNED

PLANNED PARKING PLANNED PARKING

MARINA

in-between the median bus lane MARINA MARINA

DBAYEH

station on proposed pedestrian bridges

DBAYEH

existing parking lot

EXISTING PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE

ZALKA

DBAYEH DBAYEH

proposed parking lot

ANTELIAS

ANTELIAS ANTELIAS

BEIRUT

PROJECTS FROM THE AZAR AWARDS COMPETITION 2018 The Bourj Pavilion

The drawings selected from the winning and commended student entries to the Azar Competition present representation as a tool for speculation and ideation. The Azar Award is a scholarship-based competition given annually to fourth year students in Architecture at ArD. Each year a different theme is approached, and the selected projects of 2018 responded to developing a project for the Bourj Square in the form of a temporary pavilion. Each representation presents a different visual approach that is unique to each projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ambition and idea.

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concept/site strategy

in the memory of “no man’s land” rotating the “green line” 0

50m

Christina Battikha First prize winner

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Amina Kassem Second prize winner

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Nayla Saniour

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DRAWING AS A RESEARCH MEDIUM Within this theme, research is understood to be central to the role of representation and drawing. The studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; outputs developed around their thesis question can be seen as conceptual devices that are research driven, and as analytical and expressive outputs that convey the specificity of their approach. As such, representation becomes fundamental to each thesisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conception, revealing the thinking process and the projected outcomes.

Architecture Design Thesis

ARCH 508/509 ARCHITECTURE DESIGN THESIS

Architecture Design Thesis is the culmination of undergraduate education in Architecture. In their year-long thesis project, students delve into a researchbased design process, beginning with critical themes and resulting in elaborate architecture schemes. From Fall to Spring of their final year, students develop research, analysis, and design experimentations, into a comprehensive thesis and architecture project. Select drawings from 12 Thesis projects are presented here, from the graduating class of 2018, highlighting each studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique use of representation as a critical tool of design.

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Mohamad Nahle 185 En-counters in Karm El-Zeitoun

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Reem Nassour You, my other Self

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Racha Doughman A Prey at Pray, a cosmic irony

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Karen Madi Edge Effect: Design for Eco-Activism

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Ibrahim Kombarji recto/verso

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Lea Ramadan The Labyrinth, a topological exploration of the Salima Serail

| ARCH 508/509 ARCHITECTURE DESIGN THESIS

Mira Al Jawahiry Be Right Back

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| ARCH 508/509 ARCHITECTURE DESIGN THESIS

Serge Saab Colony Sentinels of Toxic Territories

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Sally Itani On the Borders of Transience

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Karim Hamouie Between the Citadel and Souks// Aleppo Syria

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Lana Barakeh I Took a Ship

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Sarine Vosgueritchian The Poetics of Rubble: The In[dust]rial Re[in]carnation of Gyumri

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Drawing is a Verb Etienne Bastormagi

Etienne Bastormagi is an architect, urbanist, and lecturer at the American University of Beirut, where he teaches foundation courses in drawing and design. His personal work and drawings have been exhibited at different locations including the Sursock Museum in Beirut, and the World Architecture Festival Award in 2017. He is a founder of the design duo Borgi | Bastormagi that focuses on product and furniture design and have exhibited at the Paris Design Week, Milan Fuori Salone, Beirut Design Week, Beirut Design Fair among others.

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The relationship of architecture and drawing offers an interesting analysis of the evolving role of drawing as a tool. Whether a sketch, a two-dimensional product of a digital software or a BIM output, to each drawing type its relic. As famously elaborated by Richard Serra in his Verb List, “Drawing is a Verb”1. At ArD, the act of drawing has been a vital focus within the frame of exploring representation in architecture, particularly in foundation courses of drawing. The many layers of the anatomy of a drawing offer different readings and interpretations during the early stages of the architectural process. These may vary from a hand drawing that portrays a preliminary concept, to a form in the making, a contrast of light and shadow, a structural skeleton, or a technical detail. In architecture at ArD, our main representation chapters in the first year of the program have dissected the act of drawing into two main courses:

• Drawing I, which involves crucial

understanding of drawing techniques and methods • Drawing II, which helps students experiment with different techniques to conceptualize drawing as a representation form, using freehand, digital, or hybrid works. Students are acquainted with the basics of the tools, from analogue H/B series pencils, inking pens, T-squares, scales, to digital software and machines – even the drawing medium itself; papers of different layouts, thicknesses, or types, including cardboard or other. All of these contribute

to the technical aspects of the craft that helps understand the techniques constituting an architectural drawing. Following a dedicated syllabus, students in Drawing I are initiated into understanding architectural projections. Using the notion of scale, they produce drawings of products and spaces, and reach architectural complexity by the end of this first semester. They also learn how to transform their projections into three dimensional drawings based on their representational needs. In Drawing II, students explore the role of drawing and representation in architecture, and how through experimentation, drawings become independent entities and outcomes. Here, representation is no longer a technical need, but a conceptual tool with which they are introduced into urban sketching, complex notions such as topography, diagrams, infographics, computation, and storytelling. The students develop their own process of design by drawing, through the abstraction of existing works and the analysis of space in specific contexts. They are also cultivated in the understanding of hands-on analogue drawings vs. computer generated ones - where the outcome is detached from any physical relationship with their works. Both courses are foregrounded in the technical aspect of drawing while conveying its conceptual and interpretive dimension. By understanding the basics of geometry and architectural projections while experimenting with different representation techniques, we allow the students to question the nature of their drawings and to express through various means their architectural conceptions.

1 As mentioned in “To Collect”, Samantha Friedman, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints at MOMA, MOMA Blog – in refence to Richard Serra’s work Verb List from 1967-68

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Department of Architecture and Design ÂŠ2019 by the American University of Beirut This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means be it electronically, mechanical, recording, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Department of Architecture and Design at AUB. The opinions, findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this book are entirely those of the authors and do not reflect those of the American University of Beirut, its affiliated organizations, or members of its Board of Trustees. For requests and permissions, contact ard@aub.edu.lb Printed in Beirut, Lebanon ISBN 978-9953-586-53-3