Gabrielle Kalouche | Rebuilding After Disaster: Beirut's Heritage Houses

Rebuilding After Disaster: Beirut’s Heritage Houses Gabrielle Kalouche

H eritage

is always at risk when developers and advocates tear down and replace structures for their own profit and commercial purposes. Preserving sites and their history has become more popular and has been gaining a foothold in movements across the world.

The appropriation of the intervention on historic sites has become a subject prone to criticism from the polarities of conservative to more liberal heritage conservationists. In Beirut, Lebanon, a city that has been rebuilt several times throughout history and now faces the need of intervention after sustaining severe damages from the 2020 Port Blast, the debate is a sensitive subject. The efforts to rebuild following the Civil War (1975 – 1990) are criticized for the demolition of historic structures and gentrification. What lesson can be learned and applied to the current situation of Beirut and its few remaining heritage structures?

This thesis aims to approach the subject of rebuilding after the Port Blast by using methods of adaptive reuse to preserve the history and memories embedded in the structures while bringing new life and purpose to their post-blast conditions.

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Beirut Port Blast Beirut History Civil War & Post-War Rebuilding Gemmayzeh & Mar Mikhael: Pre-Blast Gemmayzeh & Mar Mikhael: Post Blast Central Hall Houses (Beiruti Houses) Central Hall Houses: Rebuilt Heritage Interventions Host Buildings Site Program & Intervention Conclusion

Beirut Port Blast August 4th, 2020

On August 4th, 2020, Beirut was devastated by an explosion in the Port.

Shortly after 6:00pm on, two explosions ripped through the city. The blasts struck the Port of Beirut, killing at least 218 people, injuring approximately 7,000, damaging $15 billion worth of property, and leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the deadly blasts damaged around 640 heritage buildings, 60 of which were critically deteriorated.

The large explosion is believed to be caused by improper storage of approximately 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate at a warehouse.

How can Beirut recover and learn from past tragedies and mistakes?

Beirut History

1512 1197 3000BC 140 BC

1876

64BC

Beirut

has a very extensive and multifaceted history. Many civilizations have overlapped in Beirut throughout time, including the Phoenicians, Romans, Ottomans, and French. It has also been rebuilt 7 times and is considered to be a phoenix that rises from the ashes.

1943 1975-1991

2020 1907

1916

Civil War & PostWar Rebuilding

Another recent event that demolished Beirut was its Civil War from 1975 to 1990 between Muslim and Christian religions. When it came time to rebuild, a private investment company, Solidere, took the lead in revitalizing the city. Many Beirut natives criticize them for doing more harm in the rebuilding process, however.

They created gentrification in the city and tore down more historic structures than the war did, in order to make room for their new commercial developments.

Gemmayzeh & Mar Mikhael Pre-Blast

This problem is being faced today with the heritage homes of Beirut that were impacted by the blast. The neighborhoods of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael suffered extensive damage, due to their close proximity to the port.

Gemmayzeh & Mar Mikhael Post Blast

Central Hall Houses (Beiruti Houses)

The heritage homes date back to the late 1800s, during the Ottoman empire and extend to the French Mandate in the early 1900s. These houses are iconic to Beirut and typically feature a central hall layout with triple arches, ornamented doors, plaster ceilings, rose windows, balconies, and a red-tiled roof.

Central Hall Houses

Rebuilt

I

became particularly interested in these houses after visiting my family in Lebanon and walking through the post-blast state of Beirut. I saw that some of the houses had been rebuilt by Non Government Organizations (NGOs). However, they looked very artificial in nature and suddenly every trace of what had happened was gone. These houses serve as physical representation of Beirut’s history and culture. The scars on the building should be left to reflect what the city and its people have gone through.

Heritage Interventions “[t]o restore a building is not to preserve it, to repair, or rebuild … [but] to re-instate it in a condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time.”

- Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

In

preservation and heritage, there are various resilience methods that can be implemented. These include adaptation, retrofitting, rehabilitation, and reconstruction and include interventions of addition, summation, subtraction and referencing. Goals of sustainability and resilience exist among the movements that utilize these methods.

+

∑

=

+

-

Addition Addition

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=

Summation Summation

Subtraction Subtraction

Reference Reference

Host Buildings

Entity

Shell

Semi-Ruin

B uildings that are to be reused can be called Host Buildings. These Host Buildings can fur ther be categorized as entity, shell, semi-ruin, fragmented, relic, and group. I want to explore how these host buildings can influence inter ventions on existing heritage buildings damaged in Beirut. Their typical found conditions can inform the inter vention used, in the case of one building, Rmeil 722, six dif ferent ways.

Fragmented

Relic

Group

Site

Rmeil

722 is part of the Gholam cluster and is located between Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael on Rue Gourard. This cluster has been around since the late 1800s and is embedded in Beirut’s most cultural neighborhood.

Rmeil 722 & Gholam Cluster

Rmeil 722

0’

2’

4’

8’

16’

Gourard

3.

2.

1.

1. Liwan Room

2. Central Hall

3. Balcony

d Street

Up

N Rmeil 722 - Existing Floor Plan

0’

2’

4’

8’

16’

Program & Intervention

Overall, the goal of the interventions is to emphasize the importance of the building’s presence and impact on Beirut’s urban fabric. The program will be decided by the type of host intervention. The programs and new uses of the building will be adapted to what is currently needed in Beirut.

Entity

The

entity approach is aiming to minimize the drastic change to the building’s original form while still improving the structure to improve modern-day life in the building. It is more of a repair, or rehabilitation, and light interior renovation rather than a radical change.

0’ 2’ 4’

8’

16’

32’

3.

3.

4.

2.

4.

2.

8.

8.

5. 5.

7. 7.

6.

1.

1.

1. Stair/ Circulation

2. Central Hall

3. Balcony

1. Stair/ Circulation 5. TV Room

2. Central Hall 6. Laundry

3.7.Balcony Bathroom

5. TV Room

6. Laundry

7. Bathroom

4. Dining Room

4. Kitchen Dining Room 8.

8. Kitchen

6.

N

Rmeil 722 - Entity - Second Level Plan N

Rmeil 722 - Entity - Second Level Plan

3.

9.

2.

4.

8.

7.

5.

6.

1.

1. Stair/ Circulation

2. Central Hall

3. Balcony

4. Bedroom

6. Laundry

7. Bathroom

8. Ensuite

9. Bedroom

5. Bedroom

N

Rmeil 722 - Entity- Third Level Plan

Shell

The shell approach takes queues from the damages sustained by the blast and suggests the removal of the floor plates and interior walls, due to their unstable nature, and uses the addition of an independent structure and program to fill the void. Formerly, a bridal shop occupied the second level of the house, so I am proposing that becomes the new program of the entire building.

Semi-Ruin

The

semi-ruin approach can incorporate an interior insertion as well as exterior addition to the ruined building. To stabilize the building, the necessary repairs can be made using a contrasting material, and new forms can be incorporated, so that the change can be visible but not different in function. The structure will be brought back to a wholistic state and can have its capacity extended for new use. The addition could incorporate a garden space to reintroduce or reference gardens that used to be prominent in the area.

Fragment

The fragment approach can stabilize and convert the ruins to an exterior plaza-like space for the public to enjoy. There are not many exterior park spaces or gardens in the region so this could be a newly designated space for that and serve as a reminder of the impact of the blast. A mulberry tree at its center can serve as a reference to the mulberry orchards that used to occupy Beirut prior to its expansion.

Relic

The

relic approach can preserve the damage of the building and create a museum-like condition through the introduction of new circulation. Landings can serve as specific viewpoints out to the city or can provide views to referential ruins. Since ornamental components of the building were destroyed, they can be replaced by sculptural elements that symbolize what was there with materials that are more ethereal in nature.

The group intervention can incorporate the Gholam cluster as a whole, including the historic staircase next to Rmeil 722. This will be a more urbanistic intervention than the others and can engage the exterior streetscape more. An envelope can be introduced around the cluster, to unify the buildings. Other details, such as pocket gardens, repairs to the buildings, and covered walkways can be introduced as well to suture the buildings together. The roof can be lit at night to stand out among the high-rise scape and draw attention to the heritage cluster.

Overall,

the goals of these interventions are to help retain the historic character of the city and its neighborhoods to educate its residents and visitors. The interventions aim to blend the current time with the historic. And as a result, the past can be observed with the present and can hold the integrity of the building’s identity in Beirut.