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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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— CNN
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... View full entry
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. — Al Jazeera
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— Al Jazeera
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... View full entry
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. ... View full entry
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.’ — theculturetrip.com
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— the Guardian
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:One... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — Wired
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 [...].
— theartnewspaper.com
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.
— theguardian.com
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?” — Al-Akhbar
