Beirut: A Green Archipelago

Beirut: A Green Archipelago is a hope-driven urban and architectural intervention project that aims to set the foundation of social reformation in a fragmenting city by challenging society’s conditioned thoughts and perceptions, promote public empowerment and change grand institutions

A polycentric urban landscape is conceptualised within the city’s demarcation border, establishing a collection of urban islands hosting Beirut’s temples of sociability. The urban islands individually challenge the government district of downtown Beirut within the ‘Justice and Remembrance Island’, the declining arts and cultural heritage district of Beit Barakat within the ‘Expressionist Island’, the attempt to challenge the contextual private school campuses within the ‘education island’ and the effort to publicise Horsh forest for communal liturgical practice within the ‘meditation island’. To liberate society from confinement, the methods of control in public institutions should be studied and reimagined in an antithetical manner. In parallel, these institutions in Beirut (Mosques, Churches, private religious schools, theatres, ministries, memorials, government edifices and public squares) are devised to condition and divide society, weakening the collective power of the nation through underlying political and religious agendas within these spaces In response to this, a formula of questioning and challenging existing institutions within Beirut is strategized in this project to liberate, empower, and unite the city. Lastly, Beirut’s monuments of sociability are detailed in a series of transcripts allocated per monument (house of Remembrance, Justice, Expression, Wisdom and One) which elucidates details that express an agenda referenced in the design decisions of each monument. Each monument’s motives ideals to addressing a social dilemma in the city whilst ‘housing’ varying social praxis. The spatial organisation of the monuments challenges conventional institutions in counteracting the traditional programs of these spaces and liberating the citizens in a variety of methods whilst consisting of the shared objective to consolidate and empower the diverse communities of Beirut. Furthermore, architectural gestures are displayed in expressive, monumental, theatrical, sublime, and symbolic representations of referenced historical public edifices