INOM
EXAMENSARBETE ARKITEKTUR, AVANCERAD NIVÅ, 30 HP
STOCKHOLM SVERIGE 2020 ,
Constructing memories
A civic center in Beirut, using postcards as historical reference and design generator.
REBECCA EDIN
KTH SKOLAN FÖR ARKITEKTUR OCH SAMHÄLLSBYGGNAD
TRITA TRITA-ABE-MBT-19719
www.kth.se
According to Rossi,
the city and its architecture are inseparable.
”One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places.”
But, what happens to the city when these
objects and places no longer exist?
The project examines, and experiments with, how one can use historical frag- ments as a starting point for the design of a 7000 square meter large civic center, or house of arts and culture, in Beirut, as this is a place where the urban
development has had a very different point of departure the last decades.
The historical fragments in this case has been a collection of postcards of va- rious public buildings that existed in the city between 1890 and 1970. Many times postcards are the main record of history of historical places, but this is not the main reason why I chose it as a study object. I chose it because of their purpose; to communicate a story of the place it portrays to outsiders, to people whose only knowledge about that place comes from the image on its front and the restricted number of words that can be squeezed into the small area on the back. Given my position as a foreigner working in a context that, although having visited multiple times, is unfamiliar to me, I found this an interes-
ting starting point for the project.
TURKEY
SYRIA
JORDAN EGYPT
CYPRUS
ISRAEL
LEBANON
Beirut
Damascus
Amman Jerusalem
Nicosia
Cairo
1:25 000 Beirut Central District (BCD)
CANAANITE 2500 BC - 1200 BC
PHOENICIAN 1200 BC - 550 BC
PERSIAN 550 BC - 333 BC
HELLENISTIC 333 BC - 64 BC
ROMAN 64 BC - 395 AD
BYZANTINE 395 - 661 AD
ABBASID 750-1100 AD UMAYYAD 661 - 750 AD
CRUSADERS 1100-1291 AD
MAMLUK 1291 - 1516 AD
OTTOMAN 1516 - 1920 AD
FRENCH MANDATE 1920 - 1941 AD
LEBANESE REPUBLIC 1941 -
Background
So, one might ask, why postcards up until 1970 only? This has to do with an important historical event in Lebanon: the Lebanese civil war that went on between 1975 and 1991. This war has of course affected the country in ways that are hard for an outsider to imagine, but I have chosen to look at the effects it had on one particular area in Beirut.
That area is usually referred to as the BCD, Beirut central district. It is the historical core of the city with roots dating back more than 5000 years, and it has been inhabited by va- rious population groups such as the Persians the romans, the ottomans and the french.
This created an area with a very diverse character: A lively and vibrant place with souks, cinemas, theaters and performance spaces. A place where all people of Beirut would
gather and interact.
When looking at maps of the BCD before and after the war one can see that they have few similarities. The dense and diverse conglomeration of buildings that characterize the 1970s map have in 2019 been replaced by a more rectilinear grid with buildings of a totally different scale. Only about 20% of the buildings are the same. This development has gotten a lot of critique from various places, partly for not being respectful enough to the areas architectural heritage, but also for what it has done to the daily life on the area.
When visiting today what one encounters is a high end residential area with very few pe-
ople on the streets and not a single public building in the entire area.
Beirut Central District 1922
Preserved or resored Demolished 1970 - 2019 Beirut Central District
1970
Beirut Central District
2019 Future Development
New Waterfront district
Beirut Central District 1922
Preserved or resored Demolished 1970 - 2019 Beirut Central District
1970
Beirut Central District
2019 Future Development
New Waterfront district
Beirut 1970
Beirut 2019
Beirut Central District
1922 Preserved or resored
Demolished 1970 - 2019 Beirut Central District
1970
Beirut Central District
2019 Future Development
New Waterfront district
Beirut Central District
1922 Preserved or resored
Demolished 1970 - 2019 Beirut Central District
1970
Beirut Central District
2019 Future Development
New Waterfront district
Demolished / preserved buildings 1970 - today
Future vision
Architectural context A series of important or iconic
buildings,
in Beirut and surroundings
Beirut Souks
Zaha Hadid Architects Beirut Terraces
Herzog & de Meuron
B018
Bernard Khoury ”The egg”
Bernard Khoury International Fair Tripoli
Oscar Niemeyer
Architectural context A series of important or iconic
buildings,
in Beirut and surroundings
Beirut Souks
Zaha Hadid Architects Beirut Terraces
Herzog & de Meuron
B018
Bernard Khoury ”The egg”
Bernard Khoury International Fair Tripoli
Oscar Niemeyer
Architectural context A series of important or iconic
buildings,
in Beirut and surroundings
Beirut Souks
Zaha Hadid Architects Beirut Terraces
Herzog & de Meuron
B018
Bernard Khoury ”The egg”
Bernard Khoury International Fair Tripoli
Oscar Niemeyer
Architectural context A series of important or iconic
buildings,
in Beirut and surroundings
Beirut Souks
Zaha Hadid Architects Beirut Terraces
Herzog & de Meuron
B018
Bernard Khoury ”The egg”
Bernard Khoury International Fair Tripoli
Oscar Niemeyer
Postcard Mapping
Demolished buildings selected for analysis
Archive pt 1
Postcard mapping
This criticism was the starting point of my project. It made me want to reintro- duce some of the functions that had been taken away from the area, and that responded to the diversity and inclusiveness that once existed. Furthermore I wanted to use a figural language associated with public buildings in Beirut and that could evoke a sense of familiarity and positive association. In order to find this I started searching for traces of the past, and this is how i came to use the postcards as a form of precedent study. I discovered an online archive of post- cards from all over the middle east. I collected the ones from my area of interest and created an archive of public buildings that used to occupy its streets, but nowadays only exist as fragments, on postcards or the minds of a decreasing number of people who actually experienced them. From this archive I selected 8 buildings of different ages, functions (public) and locations in the city, which
came to form the basis of my project.
Campo Marzio dell Antica Roma Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1762
Form follows fiction / Methodology
Campo Marzio dell Antique Roma is a series of etchings made by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and published in 1762. Also including a map of the Campo it depicts a number of antique roman ruins, existing or demolished, in an attempt to preserve their memory. Even though Piranesi himself said that he ”attemp- ted to exercise the greatest possible exactitude” when taking a closer look it soon becomes clear that his depictions are far from copies of their motives.
One can say that he is preserving the vision of them, but with defamiliarisation techniques such as fragmentation, reformulation and decontextualization he is changing their meaning altogether. By fantasy and manipulation of the past he both enhances the perception of familiarity and makes it relevant for the future.
This way of working has been very influential on project as well. I started the project with a series of fragments - postcards - and as a method of analysis I fragmented these even further. I made line drawings and extracted different parts in order to find shapes or figures that I found familiar and characteristic for that specific building. These shapes I later manipulated to use in my design in various ways, as paving, benches, railings or, the most obvious a series of object-like buildings. These came into being through extrusion of contour lines in two directions. Some of them ended up relatively similar to the 2d silhouette, whereas others due to perspectives or shifts in the postcard image came out tilted or distorted. I tried to see this as a quality and used it to create openings
below them and tilts in the ground
Extracted building
Traced building
Extraction: Characteristic fragment, Contour / Figure
Extraction Pattern / Repetition
Extraction: Colour (from other postcard, see booklet) Selected postcard, 90 x 140 mm
Extracted building
Traced building
Extraction:
Characteristic fragment, contour
Extraction Characteristic Pattern / Repetition
Extraction:
Characteristic fragment, contour
Extraction: Colour (from other postcard, see booklet) Selected postcard, 90 x 165 mm
Extracted building
Traced building
Extraction: Fragment Figure / Contour Selected postcard, 90 x 140 mm
Extraction: Characteristic detail Figure / Contour
Extraction: Characteristic detail Figure / Contour
Extraction Colour Extracted building
Traced building
Extraction: Characteristic Fragment Pattern / Repetition Extraction: Characteristic Fragment Figure / Contour
Extraction: Colour (from other postcard, see booklet) Extraction detail Selected postcard, 110 x 140 mm
Extracted building
Traced building Selected postcard, 90 x 140 mm
Extraction:
Familiar shape, Figure / Contour
Extraction Characteristic Pattern Extraction Characteristic detail Extraction Characteristic detail
Extraction: Colour (from other postcard, see booklet)
Extracted building Selected postcard, 90 x 140 mm
Traced building
Extraction: enhancing symmetry Figure / Contour
Extraction:
Characteristic detail
Extraction Pattern / Repetition
Extraction Colour
Extracted building Selected postcard, 90 x 140 mm
Traced building
Extraction: Characteristic detail Figure / Contour
Extraction Detail
Extraction Detail Extraction Pattern / Repetition
Extraction: Colour (from other postcard, see Extracted building
Traced building Selected postcard, 90 x 140 mm
Extraction Detail Extraction: Characteristic Fragment Figure / Contour
Extraction: Colour (from other postcard, see booklet)
Gallery & Shop 1:200 -1: Entrance & workshop spaces
Performance center 1:200 3rd floor: Balcony 2nd floor: Black box 1st floor: Stage basement, storage, toilets
Ground floor: Entrance, foaje & bar -1: Small stage & decor workshop
Administration
& café / ticket office 1:200
Park pavillion 1:200
Ground floor: A place to sit -1: Courtyard and echibition space
Film library &
Documentationn center 1:200 3rd floor: Reading rooms
2nd floor: Library 1st floor: Archive & offices Ground floor: Café & Magazines -1: Reading space,Cinemateque
Restaurant 1:200
-1: Kitchen
Sculpture garden 1:200
Future vision 2019
2001 1990
Site
The site is situated right next to the historical center. 78000 m2 in size it bor- ders the city to the south, an important future development area in the east and the mediterranean and the Corniche, which is the most renowned seaside promenade of Beirut, to the west / north. Despite this strategic location it is kind of a non space, or to be fair: a construction site. This is because the area was reclaimed from the sea not more then 40 years ago. It is a man made, constructed space that has been reclaimed from the sea and started its life as a dumpsite in the late 70s, and it is the place where a lot of the demolition waste from the civil war ended up, and the area even got its name from one of these buildings: the normandy landfill. This has been very influential to my
design and it is also the reason I chose this site to begin with.
Made out of demolition waste and domestic garbage
from the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) Got its name from the iconic Normandy hotel
that used to be situated on its border.
”The Corniche” Made out of demolition waste and domestic garbage
from the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) Got its name from the iconic Normandy hotel
that used to be situated on its border.
”The Corniche”
Made out of demolition waste and domestic garbage
from the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) Got its name from the iconic Normandy hotel
that used to be situated on its border.
”The Corniche”
Building footprints + connections
Building footprints + pathways
House of arts and culture
Performance hall / Cinema: 2400 m2 Exhibition space: 1200 m2 Workshop space: 650 m2 Documentation center / Film library:
900 m2
Administration & technicue: 1200 m2 Cafeteria & Shop: 500 m2
Reception: 1100 m2 Parking and delivery: 7800 m2
Total: 15 750 m2 (7950 m2 without parking)
5300 m2 P
P
Building foorprints & relative relations
from archive Connections
to surroundings
+
Building footprints + connections
Building footprints + pathways
House of arts and culture
Performance hall / Cinema: 2400 m2 Exhibition space: 1200 m2 Workshop space: 650 m2 Documentation center / Film library:
900 m2
Administration & technicue: 1200 m2 Cafeteria & Shop: 500 m2
Reception: 1100 m2 Parking and delivery: 7800 m2
Total: 15 750 m2 (7950 m2 without parking)
5300 m2 P
P
Building foorprints & relative relations
from archive Connections
to surroundings
+
7 characteristic pavillions 3.
are placed in connection to the sunken courtyards.
Underground connections are 2.
established between the courtyards, creating space for the large program while preserving a small scale
impression.
The manipulated building footprints 1.
create a series of sunken couryards around the park. This markes their absence in the city and reconnects
the site to its history.
Old coastal line
Boulevard du Park
Rue Zeytoune
Rue Allenby
Civic square
Zaitunay Bay
Beirut Souks SeasonsFour
Le Y acht club
Cinemacity
Avenue du Parc Rue Patriarche Hoyek
Corniche
Garage
Beirut Souks
Site plan 1:2000
0 50 100 Existing buildings Future development
Section A-A, 1:200
Section D-D
1:200 Section C-C
1:200 Section B-B
1:200
