Act II: Extract

Extract sites, plots and buildings that require rehabilitation and/or care.

The following map exercises were utilised to extract potential sites of intervention in a city with minimal urban planning. This allowed me to visualise the locations of parcels, post-war structures, heritage buildings, evicted buildings and the plethora of damaged structures.

Using GIS data and techniques; areas, land type, building type, building year, mobility of the city etc. were utilised in order to created a layered sequence in order to extrapolate potential sites and buildings; then investigating those that require immediate care.

Introducing a grid to the chaos of the urban fabric of Beirut, presenting the existing plots of land, also called ‘parcels,’ and the radii of the impact of the explosion.

Building blueprints of the city pre-blast.

These are not buildings, but plots of land (called ‘parcels’) that are below 100 m2 , deemed unbuildable as sole plots. These are owned both privately and publicly and are usually backed up by ownership fraud. They currently house the majority of parking lots that are scattered around the city, some illegally. These present potential sites of additional interventions, scattering the queer fragments around the city.

The 1954 zoning law specified that 35 square meters is the minimum allowable buildable plot size. In 1973, this article was annulled from the 1954 zoning law. Today, in zone 3 for instance, the minimum buildable plot has to have an area of 120 square meters for existing plots, and 300 square meters for newly parceled plots. Such constraints on building in small plots are among the key reasons pushing small owners to sell their properties to large investment companies, hence majorly shifting the historic social constitution of neighbourhoods.

Buildings that were permitted after the end of the civil war in 1990, many of which are owned by developers that have destructed and rebuilt more than 30% of the city.

Buildings that have received permits for demolition betweeen 2014 and 2018. 193 buildings in the city were granted permits for demolition, 26 of which were heritge buildings dating back pre-1940’s. Some post-civil structures were also included to allow for new higher skyscrapers to take over the city.

Buildings that were evicted pre-blast as part of new developments. 7 of those buildings were heritage structures (pre-1940’s). This also presents some of the city’s occupants that have been kicked out (or paid off) by developers in order to re-shape the city

The impacts on the fabric of the city; the more densely hatched areas show the heaviest impacts, possibly where buildings have been completely destroyed. Over 8,000 buildings in the city were damaged. 83 structures concentrated in the historic quarters of Gemayzeh and Mar Mikhael were affected.

The layering of maps to extract certain plots or buildings that relate to different implications. These sites highlight the most in need spaces that require care, and can potentially be made productive as spaces for queer initiatives. 250 heritage buildings are potentially extracted from the mapping exercise, whilst 83 of those structure sit around the 5km impact radius. After a walk around the entire city, some final sites 49 were discovered and presented in the following pages.

Example heritage sites in Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael:

“Heritage is commonly understood as a process of con- scious, purposeful remembrance for the political, cul- tural or economic needs of those in the present; it involves a subjective representation of valued objects, significant persons, places and symbolic events of the past, closely allied with issues of identity and power. . . . More especially so, post-colonial societies, following their at- tainment of independence from colonial rule, tend to be preoccupied with issues of representation and defining a new identity, for which selected aspects of the past under- stood as heritage serve as inspiration or foundation. The seizing of selfrepresentation is often a key prerogative, as these societies attempt to complement (and complete) political freedom with a “decolonization of the mind.”

These heritage structures present the many buildings in which this project could be replicated. Most of what has been, and still is being, debated pertains to Beirut’s colonial heritage, this includes the period from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century. During this time, the medieval city was partially razed as part of the Ottoman modernising reforms (1900–1916) and then duly Haussmannized (the regeneration of Paris) under the French Mandate (1920s–1930s). Because of this timing, the buildings and townscapes of this period may be qualified simultaneously as “colonial” and “early modern.” On the one hand, their conservation thus raises the issue of assimilating the colonial legacy as an integral part of national heritage, and on the other, it raises the issue of qualifying early modern architecture as eligible for conservation.

Quote from: S. Marschall, (2008). “The Heritage of Post- Colonial Societies,” in B. Graham and P. Howard, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Hampshire: Ashgate. p. 347