area 120 – Beirut

photo by Pietro Savorelli Charbel Maskineh: What is your opinion on the quality of the urban space in the historical centre and in the rest of the city? Maroun El-Daccache:…

The present-day Beirut is an ancestral yet contemporary city. Metaphorically speaking, the parts into which it is divided appear as tectonic plates that clash against one another without ever merging,…

“Beirut is too big to be contained!” The slogan appeared on the walls of the city in the spring of 2005, during one of the most convulsed moments in the…

Beirut is the product of the superimposition of various settlement principles: Phoenician, Greek-Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Medieval, Ottoman and French. These are associated with different hidden alignments that have formed the…

Charbel Maskineh-Nicola Santini: Which tools, strategies and structure has the Municipality for the urban management and the future development of the city of Beirut? Nadim Abourizk: When I stepped into…

In the attempt to read Beirut, I propose a brief overview of its public spaces through time. Since the very early stages of the city’s development, public spaces had been…

Central Beirut is the sector which has suffered most damages from the Civil War and it is also the one in which the reconstruction has produced the most radical transformations…

Former City Centre Complex built by Philip Joseph Karam in 1965 Nicola Santini: You are the author of several essays and studies on urban transformations in Beirut and on city…

In the early Nineties Beirut became the world’s biggest archaeological site, with almost one hundred and fifty excavations. In fact, the urgent need to rebuild the city in the years…

The municipality of Beirut comprises twelve districts that together occupy an area of about 100 kmq; the urban tissue continues without breaks southwards and eastwards, with the municipalities of the…

This research is part of a bigger monitoring project that was initiated by MAJAL Academic Urban Observatory (IUA, ALBA, University Of Balamand) in 2010, in the context of its research…

The Bourj-Hammoud district is the geographical extension of Beirut City along the Mediterranean coastline; it constitutes the immediate eastern suburb of the capital by the seaside separated from it by…

photo by Pietro Savorelli In the Beirut skyline cluttered with lifeless concrete shells, the Platinum Tower avoids commercial pastiche gimmicks and bravura one-liners, offering instead a sober, poised solution to…

This new campus takes a contextual approach, integrating physically, culturally, and historically with Beirut’s urban tissue. Conceptually an urban block with sculpted voids, the building’s hollow spaces define six autonomous…

Selected in an international invited competition, the Olayan School of Business results from focused attention on its program, the production and the transmission of knowledge, the quality of its interior…

Set in the new landfill area of downtown Beirut, the center is the first structure dedicated to contemporary art in the waterfront development. With a constantly shifting context at the…

Pier 7 is an outdoor night club on the Dora seaside. It is the first investment of its kind in this highly industrial and neglected area of the greater Beirut…

The ‘Shoreline Walk’ is a sequence of connected spaces which form part of the reconstruction of the Beirut city centre. The area suffered physically and emotionally during the 1975‒1991 Civil…

The Rmeil 183 residential building is located on a 247 m² land on lot #183 in a quiet residential area of Rmeil. The 18 m wide western edge faces Chafik…

The Achrafieh 893 Residential building is located on a 1054 square-meter land situated on Plot # 893 in a high end residential area of Achrafieh, Beirut. The project runs parallel…

Beirut and Memory Nicola Santini: What do you think is the role of architecture in the recovery or mystification of memory in Beirut and what role your architecture plays in…

We work under a special circumstance for this project: a house extension for a private lot in the suburban Beirut, where nature tends to disappear. These Mountains’ sides overlooking Beirut…

Within a huge existing pine forest environment, T-project is a villa situated on a considerably sloping rocky site naturally leveled framing a superb perspective of green mountains and Beirut city…

The Beirut Marina building, by Steven Holl Architects with L.E.FT, takes its shape from strata and layers in forking vectors. Like the ancient beach that was once the site, the planar…

In Beirut, a city spanning several millennia, history is lost in the mists of time: archaeological sites set our minds roaming, ancient history is eroded, softened; recent history is still…

Site: The design of Beirut Terraces was quite literally influenced by the layers of the city’s rich and tumultuous history. It is a history now also marked by inescapable traces…

Koukjian is a jewelry store in central Beirut. The existing site was long and narrow, so taking advantage of these conditions, we created on elongated central linear space. Reflecting the…

Katia Carlucci: .PSLAB was founded in 2004 in Beirut and now a team of approximately 100 people is working worldwide wwith bases in Europe and in the Middle East. How…

What is Beirut? What is the soul of this city, apparently so indecipherable, aggressive and fragmented, and yet dangerously attractive like a magnetic zone? Like a Tarkovskian Stalker, the urban explorer…