Urban management and future of a city – Interview to Nadim Abourizk
Charbel Maskineh-Nicola Santini: Which tools, strategies and structure has the Municipality for the urban management and the future development of the city of Beirut? Nadim Abourizk: When I stepped into the Municipal Council, and being an architect and …
A short story of Beirut’s public spaces
In the attempt to read Beirut, I propose a brief overview of its public spaces through time. Since the very early stages of the city’s development, public spaces had been associated with exogenous interventions. Among the visible traces are the Roman b …
“Beirut Central District“: reconstruction as development
Central Beirut is the sector which has suffered most damages from the Civil War and it is also the one in which the reconstruction has produced the most radical transformations in the tissue and the appearance of the townscape. The Beirut Central Distr …
Beyond Solidere interview to Robert Saliba
Former City Centre Complex built by Philip Joseph Karam in 1965 Nicola Santini: You are the author of several essays and studies on urban transformations in Beirut and on city center recovery. What is your opinion about Solidere reconstruction? Robert …
Archaeology and preservation
In the early Nineties Beirut became the world’s biggest archaeological site, with almost one hundred and fifty excavations. In fact, the urgent need to rebuild the city in the years after the war has entailed major infrastructural projects and developm …
Urban and metropolitan area: a city of cities
The municipality of Beirut comprises twelve districts that together occupy an area of about 100 kmq; the urban tissue continues without breaks southwards and eastwards, with the municipalities of the metropolitan area, along the directrix of the road t …
Zokak el-Blat: a neighborhood of contrasts
This research is part of a bigger monitoring project that was initiated by MAJAL Academic Urban Observatory (IUA, ALBA, University Of Balamand) in 2010, in the context of its research activities on Beirut’s reconstruction and urban development, with th …
Bourj-Hammoud district
The Bourj-Hammoud district is the geographical extension of Beirut City along the Mediterranean coastline; it constitutes the immediate eastern suburb of the capital by the seaside separated from it by the Beirut River, and the northern stretch of the …
Platinum tower
photo by Pietro Savorelli In the Beirut skyline cluttered with lifeless concrete shells, the Platinum Tower avoids commercial pastiche gimmicks and bravura one-liners, offering instead a sober, poised solution to the difficult problem of a luxury high- …