“Beirut Central District“: reconstruction as development
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 in the tissue and...
Beyond Solidere interview to Robert Saliba
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 center recovery. What is your...
Archaeology and preservation
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 after the war has...
Urban and metropolitan area: a city of cities
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 metropolitan area, along the...
Zokak el-Blat: a neighborhood of contrasts
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 activities on Beirut’s reconstruction...
Bourj-Hammoud district
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 the Beirut River, and...
Platinum tower
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 the difficult problem of a...
USJ campus de l’innovation et du sport
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 blocks and construct multiple...
Suliman S. Olayan school of business
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 life, and the specific...
Beirut exhibition center
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 urban scale setting a...
Pier 7 club
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 metropolis. Its master plan...