Beirut Shifting Grounds is a research project that spanned over two years, simultaneously as Beirut was going downhill with the collapse of its economy, pandemic outbreak and finally the Beirut Port explosion. This very same period was ripe with unprecedented activism, collective self-organization and bottom up mobilization in the face of the pervading adversity.
In such context, the project probes “how will we live together” by foregrounding spatial practices at the ground level of Beirut that allow people to adapt through uncertainty and change.
Through four parallel narratives, the research focuses on manifestations of improvisation, reclamation, and production that offer lessons of adaptation and solidarity for the uncertain future.
The human lens - it is all on the streets- presents four short films that encounter the act of “being” in Beirut’s public realm through shifting conditions: privatization, revolution and post-blast activism.
The urban lens - improvisation- projects the life of 7 neighbourhoods in Beirut through transitional moments; narrating their urban transformation, improvisations at their ground level, as well as indicators that inform their urban pulse. This lens traces how improvisations evolve to organized networks of solidarity after the Port Blast, during the relief and reconstruction period.
The architecture lens – production- narrates Beirut’s built environment through specific buildings and typologies of sections, reflecting on the spatial modes of production that shaped Beirut’s ground until the Port blast, and calling for new modes of collective production amid the post-blast reconstruction.
The temporal lens- reclamation- emphasize the agency of urban space to accommodate public expression through a time-lapse of Martyrs ‘square, focusing on the metamorphosis of its urban form, activities, public mobilization and its capacity to reinvent itself through the different periods.
Together, the four lenses raise an open speculation on the architecture of the ground and its proclivity to support collective appropriation, offering the possibility of a city that still belongs to its inhabitants amid shifting conditions.
The project is an interior refurbishment of a two floors penthouse for a family of four, located in Wadi Abu Jamil in Beirut Central District. The original arrangement of the penthouse presented a fragmented circulation between its two floors with poor spatial interaction, and a narrow main foyer. The most significant spatial intervention was the introduction of a double height space at the center of the house, reorganizing around it the once fragmented realms of living areas, work areas, storage and bedrooms. Defined by a cladded wooden skin, such element features a widened entrance that transitions smoothly to the reception and brings back to its center the staircase as a feature element.The stairs become a floating structure within such space, suspended from the ceiling through vertical steel profiles that emphasize its lightness and its detachment from skin and slab, as if it’s floating in the middle of the double height space. The wooden skin’s form reconciles the different misalignments and provides a curvilinear horizontal and vertical continuity between the widened lobby and adjacent spaces on both floors. This skin integrates doors to adjoining rooms,storage closets, see through cutouts and incorporated lighting.It turns the corner to maintain the same treatment for the inner living room wall. Steel profiles stick out of the skin to create door handles and shelves. Complementing the minimal materiality, a playful custom made steel and copper lighting fixture hangs from the double height reception. In contrast with its wooden skin core, the remaining surfaces of the penthouse are white paint for walls, white marble for floors and white steel for the staircase. The different rooms are designed with a recurrent system of having the exterior walls painted white and the internal walls with different playful wood cladding to incorporate doors, library and closets. During its development and execution phases, the project became an exploration of the wide array of means for both designing and fabricating architecture on the light on local craftsmanship constraints.
Hamat house is an extension to an existing traditional house in the village of Hamat, North Lebanon. The proposed extension is a simple stone monolith contrasting and working with the vernacular architecture of the house with several stone claustras that control the relationship between the addition and the exterior.
Loop is an experimentation with the flexible properties of the rattan. Rattan ( khayzaran in arabic) can gather strength by bending and grouping several stems together. Instead of the traditional assembly of bending orthogonally and knotting, we propose to bend and connect each stem diagonally, to create a chair in one continuous loop.
The typology of Mzarib house interprets the architecture of the agricultural terraces that are typical for the area into a stepped volume that is divided into two storeys, offset to one another following the topography of the hillside. The main elevation opens up towards the valley with room-height corner windows. The windows are mounted with foldable louvers that provide protection from the sun and extend the interior into terraces and a garden with an outdoor pool. The materials are influenced by the region. The stone for the terraces and cladding comes from local quarries. The inner spaces further reflect the surroundings. While the staircase located in the rear area acts as a lightwell that look back at the cliffs behind the house, the living and bedrooms are situated at the front corners, providing panoramic vistas of the surrounding landscape.
Walnut Tree House is an extension to an existing house in Ehden. The land behind the house terraces up and features a big walnut tree. The idea of the project is to inhabit the slope and articulate the added extension around the walnut tree. The starting point defines two levels of living spaces, linked by stairs. Added walls and volumes create a stepped massing. A floating roof follows the slope of the terrain, completes the inhabitation process, creating terraces, courtyards and living spaces underneath. Operable glazing allow for cross ventilation throughout the two levels of the addition, allowing for passive cooling.
The Sursok Apartment is defined by a linear split level circulation that is its most interesting architectural feature,fluctuating between a double height reception space andtwo single heights bedrooms’ levels, and extruding out to the balconies in the same scissor-shaped slab to define the façade of the building. The scheme reinforces this spatial arrangement by revealing the structural concrete wall that runs along the length of the apartment, allowing its linearity to become the backdrop for the apartment’s main feature: a multifaceted steel“spine”. This newly introduced spine sculpts the circulation, surfaces and spaces that makes the backbone of the apartment: It merges the underbelly of the staircase withthe mezzanine slab, allowing the mezzanine and the kitchen underneath it to open up to the reception. At the reception space, the spine protrudes out in a narrow catwalk that overlooks the living area on one side and a double height bookshelf on the other side. The spine reconnects with the reception floor in a structural ladder. It is topped by a thinsteel handrail that becomes a shelf at the catwalk with a lighting fixture for reading.Punctual elements like awooden-cladded entrance niche, horizontal wood shelves, and lighting fixtures animate the concrete wall and steel spine, breaking down their scale into intimate instances without undermining their overall integrity.
Fatre house sits on a site of oaks and rocks that overlooks Adonis valley. The landscape calls for new modes of inhabitation between topography & architecture. The project inserts into the hillside by placing the different functions of the house on the site’s natural terraces, espousing its orientations and levels. The project reinterprets the local vernacular typology, through its simple massing and its materiality.
Selective excavation prepares the site to receive the house’s volumes, in a acupunctural process that involves the widening of existing platforms. Stone cladded volumes nestle in the hillside and reconstruct the landscape: reception volume overlays the site’s first platform, stairs cascade down from the reception and into the landscape; to the lower living room and sleeping quarters that overlays the site’s second platform; leading to the pool on the third platform. Together, the three volumes of living spaces frame a central zone in concrete and glass, while adjacent volumes of service and bedrooms are cladded in stone, blending the house in its landscape. The site’s extracted stones are reused for cladding and blending the architecture in its environment. Natural elements surrounding the house are simultaneously framers of views and framed by the views deriving from the volumes’ implantation in the site.
Zgharta house sits in a Mediterranean olive grove landscape. The site slopes gently to the main road and enjoys an unobstructed view of the agrarian plain and mountains. The house negotiates conditions of inclined topography, views and privacy by massing in two L-shaped horizontal levels that follow the natural terrain: The lower level comprises bedrooms, bathrooms, and technical spaces. The upper level is dedicated to the main living space, dining, kitchen and library. The extrusion of the two horizontal levels creates a third space, an outdoor courtyard which allows the landscape to slide throughout the house. A u-shaped stone wall wraps diagonally around the two floors, creating an intense outer edge, and a serie of enclosed patios. In the lower level, the patios are a serie of inner gardens that inundate the bathrooms and bedrooms with natural light. In the upper level, the patio is an open air entrance porch. In contrast, interiors are fully glazed, opening up to the privacy of the patios, courtyard and to the distant mountain views. The roof hovers over the house with large cantilevers, bringing shade and privacy to the glazed living spaces below, and blurring inside and outside spaces. From the street, the house is perceived as a serie of horizontal silhouettes that fade out in the ground, inscribing the house in its larger geography while giving it privacy from the proximity of the road. The material palette comprises sandstone cladding for the site boundary and u-shaped wall, white concrete for the roof and structure, and low energy glazing for the inner facades. The southern orientation of the house and its massing allows for natural lighting, cross ventilation and passive cooling for all spaces; canceling the need for air-conditioning during the long Mediterranean summer, while benefiting from the optimum sun exposure during winter.
Beirut Shifting Grounds is a research project that spanned over two years, simultaneously as Beirut was going downhill with the collapse of its economy, pandemic outbreak and finally the Beirut Port explosion. This very same period was ripe with unprecedented activism, collective self-organization and bottom up mobilization in the face of the pervading adversity.
In such context, the project probes “how will we live together” by foregrounding spatial practices at the ground level of Beirut that allow people to adapt through uncertainty and change.
Through four parallel narratives, the research focuses on manifestations of improvisation, reclamation, and production that offer lessons of adaptation and solidarity for the uncertain future.
The human lens - it is all on the streets- presents four short films that encounter the act of “being” in Beirut’s public realm through shifting conditions: privatization, revolution and post-blast activism.
The urban lens - improvisation- projects the life of 7 neighbourhoods in Beirut through transitional moments; narrating their urban transformation, improvisations at their ground level, as well as indicators that inform their urban pulse. This lens traces how improvisations evolve to organized networks of solidarity after the Port Blast, during the relief and reconstruction period.
The architecture lens – production- narrates Beirut’s built environment through specific buildings and typologies of sections, reflecting on the spatial modes of production that shaped Beirut’s ground until the Port blast, and calling for new modes of collective production amid the post-blast reconstruction.
The temporal lens- reclamation- emphasize the agency of urban space to accommodate public expression through a time-lapse of Martyrs ‘square, focusing on the metamorphosis of its urban form, activities, public mobilization and its capacity to reinvent itself through the different periods.
Together, the four lenses raise an open speculation on the architecture of the ground and its proclivity to support collective appropriation, offering the possibility of a city that still belongs to its inhabitants amid shifting conditions.
