My thesis deals with civic space in contemporary Lebanon, under the emerging trend of privatisation. The chief question in this thesis is whether civic space, the space of citizenship, is produced by forces other than architecture, say events, or whether it can be designed. If civic space is a social production (Lefebvre, 1974), what role, if any, does the designer have? The hypothesis I formulated stipulates that under privatisation, the concept of citizenship, and subsequently civic space, is altered radically, since the state-citizen dialectic is restructured into that of a corporation-consumer or a service provider-tax payer, which deprives citizenship of its intrinsic qualities, and establishes a status quo where a portion of the citizens are denied access because of the exclusivity of the party that exerts control.
I have identified the players involved to be the private sector, the state, and the citizens with all their representatives, especially the non-governmental organisations (NGOs), concerned with the promotion of civic life. Accordingly, my programme incorporates headquarters for NGOs, governmental agencies, multi-purpose halls that cater to various activities, an institute of urbanism that would deal with the study and documentation of Beirut’s built and natural environment, paying special attention to the socio-political and economic nuances that carve out this built environment. The institute is the crux of the space since I argue that the city would be the last thing shared by all people, even if unequally, when the state wanes.
The site I have chosen is a governmental block in the centre of Beirut, in an area which I designated as a section of the city, due to, firstly, the diversity of its inhabitants and users (background, vocation, social class, religious sect), secondly, to its epitomising of mixed use (governmental institutions, residences, offices, banks, hospitals, entertainment venues, cultural locales, and establishments of education), and thirdly, to its easy access and connection to the rest of the city by major arteries. The enticing factor in the particular governmental block is the transformation of the current law school into Beirut’s public library, funded by national and international private capital, thus constituting a Trojan Horse for privatisation in an exclusively governmental block. Facing this complex is Lebanon’s chamber of commerce and industry, a quasi parliament for the country’s economic faculties.
In my design approach, I attack the notion of the enclave, since I believe it has done more than its fair share in the deterioration of civic life, because of the segregated milieus it has nurtured. My initial design comprised grouping the programme under one complex, which I exploded then over the site (2 blocks), and made it dependent on the rest of the city. For example, I did not design in any convention facilities because I believed that the users could benefit from the abandoned cinemas and theatres scattered all across the street on which the site is located; moreover, I was concerned with allowing the city to seep into the site, by allowing for mixed-use like residential accommodation and offices to be intertwined with the other functions.
The Urban Institute of Beirut is hosted in the former garden of the law school being converted into the city’s public library: Out of deference to the historical Ottoman building dating back to 1907 and graced with a sloping site of 3m of variation in datum from south to north, the proposed institute is partially submerged underground yet enjoys a frontage to a new urban piazza off Hamra Street to the north . The intervention acts intentionally as a landscape setting to the historical building; furthermore, being submerged on the south side, it offers the possibility of linking across Emile Edde Street to the Sanayeh public garden.