Archinect - News

Lebanon has 34 cultural sites placed under UNESCO protection

2024-11-26T16:45:00-05:00

The cross-border Israeli military confrontation with Hezbollah has induced UNESCO to take drastic action by declaring 34 cultural properties in Lebanon to be under provisional enhanced protection, according to a new announcement from the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property.

The action mirrors another made by UNESCO last year to add heritage sites in Ukraine and Palestine to its Enhanced Protection List (to which Lebanon previously had no entries). Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO’s two-term Director-General, says: "UNESCO has a deep and long-standing cooperation with Lebanon. We will spare no effort to provide all the expertise and assistance needed to protect its exceptional heritage."

Lina Ghotmeh's 2023 Serpentine Pavilion serves the community an invitation to 'dwell together'

2023-06-07T03:00:00-04:00

Lina Ghotmeh’s 2023 Serpentine Pavilion design makes its official debut this week in London. For the 22nd contribution to the summer pavilion series, the Lebanese-born and Paris-based architect showcases a design that highlights aspirations towards community gathering in a manner that speaks to the importance of building relationships while "inviting us to convene, sit down, think, share, and celebrate exchanges."

The design for À table (whose name in French means to call and invite those to sit together for conversation and a meal) is a lightweight, pleated canopy roof that references the structure of a palm leaf. The design of the space aims to "respond to the surrounding tree canopies," while the internal wooden beans are meant to "emerge as thin tree trunks" encompassing the pavilion. The detailed, plant-like cut-out patterns of the panels assist in providing natural light and ventilation in the pavilion as it surrounds a concentric series of tables that sit within the pavilion...

UNESCO adds three heritage sites to its 'in-danger' list

2023-01-26T12:15:00-05:00

The historic center of the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and sites in Yemen and Lebanon were added to the World Heritage List Wednesday by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). All three sites were simultaneously added to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. The statement said that the decision would give Ukraine access to “technical and financial international assistance” to protect and rehabilitate the city center.

Both the Yemeni site and, of course, Odesa were placed under the category in response to the ongoing conflicts afflicting both countries. The latter being of constant "grave concern” to the UN’s cultural body since its inception 11 months ago.

The third site, Rachid Karami International Fair in Tripoli, was designed by Oscar Niemeyer prior to the beginning of his exile from Brazil in the early 1960s. It had been left unfinished as a result of the long Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975. UNESCO’s nomination text cites “[an] alarming state of conservation, the lack of financial resources for its maintenance, and the latent risk of development proposals” as the reason for its inscription.

Beirut port explosion survivors are pushing to have the remaining silos preserved as a memorial site

2022-02-24T13:45:00-05:00

Last August, Swiss engineering firm Amann Engineering GmbH concluded that the iconic grain silos are at risk of collapsing as they slowly tilt. The Lebanese government, notably Economy Minister Amin Salam who is in charge of the silos, has echoed similar sentiments, which has angered the families of the devastating blast’s victims.

The structure was comprised of 42 individual reinforced concrete cylindrical silos and is credited with preventing the blast radius from further impacting the heavily-populated western portion of the city, which could have killed into the thousands. The remaining portion has since become a de facto memory site to those lost in the blast (and its survivors) similar to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial that was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

Back in May, Beirut issued an international call for proposals for a port renewal competition that includes the silo site. Many Lebanese citizens have responded favorably to the restoration of the silos in support of victims’ families who have become fed up with the controversial judicial investigation into the blast’s root causes. The struggle has drawn parallels to the failure to hold certain parties accountable after its devastating Civi...

A global competition to redesign the Port of Beirut has been announced

2021-05-20T14:12:00-04:00

The Beirut municipality and the Inspireli Awards have announced a competition calling on architecture students from around the world to submit entries for a new Port of Beirut, following the devastating 2020 explosion that completely destroyed the port and the adjacent part of the city.

The aim of the competition is to offer humanitarian aid to Beirut through the unique designs and innovations of students’ submissions. The subject of this massive renewal project will be implemented in the curriculum of many universities around the world throughout the upcoming winter and spring semesters, with a final submission date in February 2022.

Photo: Inspireli

The new Port of Beirut will be rebuilt and financed by Lebanon’s Finance, Design, Built, Operate, and Transfer Department (F.D.B.O.T). The Port administration and the Ministry of Public Work and Transportation are currently setting their requirements and conditions list, which will shape the approach of the entries and, subsequently, ...

Fire breaks out in Zaha Hadid-designed Beirut building

2020-09-15T14:04:00-04:00

A fire has broken out in a downtown Beirut building near the city's port where an explosion last month killed nearly 200 people, wounded thousands and left the city's residents traumatised. It was not immediately clear what caused the fire in one of the city's best-known buildings that was the work of the late Iraq-born British architect, Zaha Hadid.

The ZHA-designed commercial building was reportedly still under construction, and one corner appears to be badly damaged from the fire, according to first news reports. Welding is rumored to be the cause of the fire. No injuries have been reported so far.

This story is still developing.

UPDATE 9/15, 11:10 AM: The Head of the Civil Defense Service and Operations Division, George Abou Moussa, told the National News Agency that the building fire was now under control.

Good morning - in today's news from #Lebanon, a huge fire erupted in the Beirut souks, in one of Zaha Hadid's signature design buildings. pic.twitter.com/Ahs1pIc0bf
— Luna Safwan - لونا صفوان (@LunaSafwan) September 15, 2020

French-Lebanese architect Jean-Marc Bonfils among casualties in deadly Beirut blast

2020-08-11T14:43:00-04:00

Jean-Marc Bonfils, a noted French-Lebanese architect who helped lead the reconstruction of Beirut's war-torn downtown after the country's civil war, died August 4th, 2020 following the massive ammonium nitrate-fueled explosion that rocked the city and caused widespread damage.

Bonfils was among at least 158 casualties resulting from the blast, which has displaced over 300,000 people and prompted the country's prime minister to resign.

Bonfils, whose father was also a prominent architect, was born in 1963 and earned degrees from the Paris-Villemin School of Architecture, the École du Louvre, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. His early career took root with some of the most daring French architects of the 1980s and 1990s, including Christian de Portzamparc, Alain Sarfati, Architecture Studio, ARTE-Jean Marie Charpentier, and Maurice Bonfils architectes.

In 1995, Bonfils and his father selected to lead the reconstruction of downtown Beirut, a content...

An empty Beirut skyscraper now transformed by an artist's colorful installation

2018-06-07T14:51:00-04:00

Lebanese artist Jad El Khoury has long been creating interventions in Beirut’s urban landscape to draw attention to these symbolic sites of warfare [...] Khoury has now taken on the imposing Murr Tower for a two-month installation: ‘The Burj El Murr soars from Beirut’s skyline, filled with scars, constantly provoking the city’s residents, whose past is shadowed by war, and present is spent dealing with those harsh memories.’

Artist Jad El Khoury's temporary installation Burj El Hawa (Tower of Air) inhabits a 34-story skyscraper in Beirut, known as Murr Tower or the Beirut Trader Center. Using brightly colored curtains found in a typical Beirut home, Khoury transforms this empty building which was used as a snipers hideout in the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

View of the blinds © Jad El Khoury

A towering presence in the city, the skyscraper now projects the artist's message of hope and vitality to the community rather than one of war and unresolved conflict.

View of Burj El Murr overlooking Beirut © Jad El Khoury

Khoury's installation Burj El Hawa will remain in the skyscraper until July 2018.

Morphosis Architects' U.S. Beirut Embassy should be finished by 2023

2017-01-24T13:39:00-05:00

After winning the competition to design the U.S. Embassy in Beirut several years ago, Morphosis Architects has had some additional good news from the State Department: a construction contract has officially been awarded for the project, which sets the timetable for completion a little over six years from now. As the official word from the unmolested Department of State website notes:

"The Department of State awarded the construction contract for the new U.S. Embassy complex in Beirut, Lebanon to B.L. Harbert of Birmingham, Alabama.

The multi-building complex will be situated on a 43-acre site in Awkar, near the current U.S. Embassy Compound. The new complex will include a Chancery, a Marine Security Guard Residence, representational and staff housing, facilities for the community and associated support facilities. The project is expected to be ready for occupancy in 2023."

BeMA: a new art museum for Beirut

2016-10-14T13:08:00-04:00

Beirut is to get a new modern art museum with a design inspired by Italian campaniles and Arabic minarets. BeMA, the Beirut Museum of Art, will feature a slender tower rising 124 metres into the sky, according to designs by the winner of an architectural competition revealed on Thursday.

An international jury has selected the Paris-based Lebanese architect Hala Wardé to oversee the complex on what the project backers describe as “a symbolically charged site that once marked the dividing lines in the Lebanese civil war”.

For more from Lebanon and the greater MENA region:

The Gadgetist: Bernard Khoury on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #22

2016-05-09T15:32:00-04:00

In the late 1980s, Bernard Khoury came to the US from Lebanon to study architecture at RISD and Harvard, then returned to establish his practice in Beirut in the mid-1990s. His father was a prominent modernist architect during Beirut’s booming pre-civil war years, and much of Khoury’s work somehow engages with Lebanon’s post-war urbanity. We spoke about his time at Harvard, studying “war architecture” with Lebbeus Woods, and how his practice is a constant reevaluation of how architecture can reflect upon, and come to terms with, the traumas of war.

Listen to One-to-One #22 with Bernard Khoury:

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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

B018, the subterranean night club Khoury designed in Beirut

Evolving Scars by Bernard Khoury and Lebbeus Woods

Drive-By Shooting...

Photographer captures the beauty of Beirut's architecture

2015-11-25T15:36:00-05:00

Many in the west too often think of Beirut as a city scarred by war and terror. But the capital of Lebanon is a beautiful, modern city, one utterly remade after the country’s civil war ended in 1990. Gleaming skyscrapers tower over historic and pre-war modernist architecture, drenched in color and bathed in sunlight. It provides no end of inspiration for Serge Najjar, whose gorgeous photos of the city fill his Instagram.

Private money attracts big-name architects to design new museums in Beirut

2015-10-09T15:01:00-04:00

A raft of museums, most backed by private money, are springing up in what is, for many, an unlikely cultural hub: Beirut, the capital of Lebanon [...] The design competition launched on 1 October; the architect Zaha Hadid is on the jury along with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones of London's Serpentine Galleries. Salamé, who founded the Aïshti fashion chain, invested $100m in funding a contemporary art museum, designed by the British architect David Adjaye, in Jal El Dib [...].

Oliver Wainwright takes a closer look at Beirut's downtown redevelopment

2015-01-22T15:43:00-05:00

Two decades after civil war blew the Lebanese capital to rubble, the city centre boasts immaculately rebuilt streets lined with Gucci and Prada stores – but the whole place is strangely deserted [...] the resulting place feels less souk than Duty Free airport lounge. It is a monotonous world of more swanky high street brands, from Burberry to Tag Heuer, staffed by idle shop assistants awaiting the promised customer footfall that has yet to arrive.

The "suffocating" life in a Syrian refugee tent

2014-12-02T15:00:00-05:00

In the tents of Syrian refugees, stories abound and tragedies surround them daily... With the passage of time, a tent becomes a home and shelter, their only place in this limited world. When rain exhausts the roof of the tents and wind uproots them, the refugees agonize as much as they did over the destruction of their houses in al-Raqqa or Aleppo. “We may have grown accustomed to our tent. Some of us like it, and others still cannot stand it. Do you know how the world can become a tent?”

NIMBYs go to court over "modern" home; Zaha gets an apology; global warming rages on: News Round-Up for August 25, 2014

2014-09-02T20:07:00-04:00

Friday, August 29:

MIT's MindRider helmet draws mental maps as you bike: The prototype is currently being used to create a mental-map and guidebook for NYC, and an upcoming Kickstarter campaign will attempt to fund the project for commercial sale.
In Beirut, a grassroots push for more grass: Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war made much of Beirut's green space inaccessible or dysfunctional. The Beirut Green Project is trying to bring at least a modicum of green space back to the city's residents.

Thursday, August 28:

Norwegian artists plan to open art academy in North Korea: Nothing's final yet, but the school is committed to its disbelief in sanctions or boycotts on art.
Alvar Aalto gets a close look from Google's Cultural Institute: Google's cameras go inside the famous Finnish architects studio, as well as a selection of his works, for a curated photo-exhibition.

Wednesday, August 27:

China considering drastic ban on coal: Chinese news outlets claim that work is underway to ban coal in Bei...

In Beirut, a grassroots push for more grass

2014-08-29T13:22:00-04:00

On a breezy summer afternoon here in the newly renovated Sanayeh Garden, children are climbing the monkey bars, pedaling on bikes and kicking a ball by the huge water fountain in the park’s center. [...] While this would be an ordinary scene in Paris, New York or Singapore, it’s practically a new invention for today’s residents of Beirut. Functional public parks have been virtually nonexistent here for decades.