Mapping the City - A creative approach on Beirut

جذور
Roots
1
june 2018
A CREATIVE APPROACH
ON BEIRUT

coastline spaces
الكورني ش
BOU CHEBL LARA & FERNEINI MURIEL
The « corniche » is the only public space
in Beirut that people really enjoy and use
with no imposed conditions. It gathers
a diversity of people, from runners to
fishermen and wanderers. But what makes
it so special? Is it just its interaction with
the sea? We asked for people’s opinions
and if they could, what would they change.
This project is an assembly of four users’
points of view.
Trying to improve the quality of this public
space based on the following parameters:
the vegetation, the high rise buildings, the
connection to the sea and the different
users. Accordingly, we imagined punctual
interventions on urban furniture.
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BOU CHEBL LARA & FERNEINI MURIEL
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SAIMA ZAIDI
The Olive Trail
درب الزيتون
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SAIMA ZAIDI
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SAIMA ZAIDI
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inspired by research of Sergej Schellen ‘Chairing Spaces’
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Streetlife
حياة الشوارع
CATHERINE SCHENK-YGLESIAS
616
(17.18%) of 3,585
total road traffic
accidents nationally
occurred in Beirut
691
(14.38%) of 4,805 victims
wounded were
in Beirut
23
(4.87%) of 472 victims
killed nationally in
traffic accidents
were in Beirut
Road injury ranks
as the 3rd cause
of premature
death in years
of life lost (YLL)
in Lebanon.
* statistics are from 2016
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According to published central
government statistics, in 2017,
the total population of Lebanon was
6,082,000.
87.8%
of people lived in urban areas,
with a total of
2,226,500
living in the capital city, Beirut.
1.99 million
people living in Lebanon were
international migrants,
and over
1 million
of these were
considered displaced
persons or refugees.
This sidewalk in SODECO, Beirut, blocked by cars,
left no safe place for pedestrians to walk on this
afternoon in mid-June 2018.
According to the General Directorate of Internal
Security Forces, 8% of accidents in 2016 were due to
pedestrians not abiding by rules of crossing the road.
22% of the vehicles in 2016 traffic accidents
in Lebanon were motorcycles. In Sodeco and
throughout Lebanese streets and highways,
one often sees people riding motorcycles without
wearing helmets.
According to a strategy document recently released
by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, “the
enhancement of health status depends not only
on the development of health services, but on
improvement of the social determinants of health,
such as poverty, unemployment and illiteracy.”
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نارجيلة
Narghile
The WHO has found
that waterpipe use is a
significant and growing
proportion of tobacco
use globally.
Sweetened, flavored
waterpipe tobacco is
called maassel, which is
made via the fermentation
of tobacco with
molasses, glycerin and
fruit essence. Studies
have shown that users are
attracted by the aromatic
smell, the smooth taste of
the smoke and the bubbling
sound of water.
CATHERINE SCHENK-YGLESIAS
The typical user smokes in
one-hour sessions during
which she or he draws a
level of toxicants ranging
from less than 1 to tens
of cigarettes.
There is still a widespread
misperception that waterpipe
tobacco smoking
is safer than cigarette
smoking.
According to the Global
Youth Tobacco Survey, use of
waterpipe tobacco products
was more frequent than cigarette
smoking among children
aged 13-15 in all 17 countries
of the MENA Region. Use
increased from 13.3% to
18.9% among young people
from 2008 to 2010.
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The MENA Region still has
the highest prevalence of
waterpipe use in the world.
Unlike cigarettes, waterpipe
products are usually sold with
no health warning.
Waterpipe smoking has
thrived in the wake of
strict tobacco control
policies and regulations
that are mostly cigaretteoriented.
Second-hand waterpipe
smoke: On a smoker-hour
basis, waterpipe smoking
results in higher concentrations
of respirable
particulate matter than
cigarette smoking.
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ANTHONY SALIBA
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وين بيروت
Beirut?
Chaos and order
were once siblings.
Whatever,
we are still
in their
ancestors phase.
Beirut, 28th june 2018
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ANTHONY SALIBA
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Missing piece -
Zokak el-Blat
زقاق لبالط
قطعة مفقودة
JULIANE TÜBKE
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Over the last years I’ve been occupied with one
set of questions - this interest in understanding
my surroundings through materials and surfaces
and how to approach these materials. The basis
for my work is a paper technique that is used in
archaeology to take imprints of rock inscriptions.
This kind of paper was originally used to record
texts that have been carved by people onto
stones. I use this imprinting technique in several
ways to explore the qualities of various stone
surfaces.
During the workshop Mapping the City I
interviewed Ghassan Maasri, who founded
Mansion in 2012 as a multi-purpose collective
space, situated in the Quarter of Zokak el-Blat.
Mansion is a grand villa from the 1930s, where
you can still find architectural surfaces from the
30s. After the meeting with Ghassan I went back
to the building to adhere the paper to a portion
of the wall that had been cut away for a study on
the building’s sustainability and reveals a former
hidden piece of history. With this technique I
produce a perfect copy of the surface. I am going
to use this imprint to create a new wall fragment
on the base of this imprint.
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JULIANE TÜBKE
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‘Mansion’
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SERVAG DERGHOUGASSIAN
Musikistan
الموسيقستان
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RACKETS
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وين بيروت
art space
Art Lab
The concentration of the cultural and the artsy
activities of the local creative communities.
The main galleries and museums in Gemayzeh,
Mar Mekhayel and Sursock . It is the creative\
culture heart of Beirut .
AYMAN KASSEM
In Lebanon, there is a lack of museums and museums’
culture and a lack of major architectures or spaces for culture
exhibitions and art. In this regard, the official governmental
support- planning is very weak. In this kind of scenarios, with
a good amount of democracy but with scarce fundings, the
low-medium creative class and the cultured communities
come to compensate this lack through the transformation of
abandoned and donated spaces in Beirut into “white cube”
art galleries. Some of these “whitecubized” spaces (re-used
and renovated as galleries) became very successful acting as
cultural hubs for international and local artists and events,
supporting future local potentials. The reuse of these spaces
is helping to preserve and conserve some damaged historical
buildings.
These spaces became able to compete in terms of
attraction with some other prestigious art spaces owned by
the high rich creative class. The concentration of these spaces
in some areas of Beirut - near and around the few official big
museums- make them well networked which is giving the areas
an “artsy” “museumized” aspect, more like culture oasis for
locals and their international guests.
The concentration of most of the art spaces, the cultural
and the artsy activities of the local creative communities in the
connected\nearby areas of Gemmayzeh, Mar Mekhayel and
Sursock makes it seems them as one main creative\ culture
heart of Beirut .
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Art on Spears
392Rmeil393
Beirut art center
Art on 56th
Art on Spears
Density of art galleries and museums
Most of the art galleries are concentrated in the area
of Gemayzeh, Mar Mekhayel and Sursock
Art Lab
Beirut art center
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الثامنة
The 8th
بيروت
Beirut
NOUR HABIB & MELINA JAFARIAN
Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, often called
the Paris of the Middle East, during the French
mandate there have been many attempts to
organize the city’s urban design taking inspiration
from the French cities design, mostly Paris.
Although the endeavor to organize Beirut city by
the French government was a bit of a success in
the downtown of Beirut, mostly around la place
de l’étoile, it did not lead to the same result
in the other districts of Beirut. In some of the
districts we can see the difference between the
old buildings and the new ones with the spacing
between them, the nature of the materials used
and their heights. New constructions tend
to be more distant from other constructions
and the new buildings are more ecological and
greener with less energy waste. And so we can say
that Beirut is a mix of designs and doesn’t follow
a fixed pattern. Which shows Beirut is a city
of coexistence, with all types of social classes,
religions, culture and history.
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ABOUT THE POLLUTION:
In the past three years, Lebanon has been
suffering from a garbage crisis. Waste
management has always been an issue in
Lebanon with its roots leading back to political
disagreement between the leading parties.
For months, the reek of rotting garbage hung
over Beirut. At one point, a ridge of white
garbage bags snaked several km along the
city’s main river before being finally removed.

NOUR HABIB & MELINA JAFARIAN
Why this shape of the city? We deided
to show the two faces of the city. As you can
see the city is divided in districts around
La place de l’étoile, a utopian French dream.
But as you look closer we see the chaos in the
city due to all the problems on different levels,
where you see the disorder between the old
and the new, the high and the low, with no
urban design, the reality of this city.
Why bottle caps? In our project we decided
to show an 8th Beirut made of water bottle
caps, to symbolize the trash and because
none of the proposed solutions to the garbage
crisis involve recycling even though it is the
easiest and best solution especially bottle
caps recycling. They are so abundant that
we can create a city out of them.
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Crane virus
فيروس الرافعة
MARIAM BOU FADEL
Crane Monitor
LONE WOLF
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Construction will always
be about people.
Look up!!!

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ENSURING
THE NEXT GENERATION

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MARIAM BOU FADEL
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Developers are
speculating the
dice about the
real estate market
values in Beiruts’
neighborhoods.
This maps shows
the variation in
real estate commercial
and residential
in Beirut,
and the spatial
distribution of
cranes currently
in operation

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inspired by research of Sergej Schellen ‘Chairing Spaces’

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During the Beirut Design Week 2018 creatives explored the
neighbourhoods of Beirut. The participants developed themes
and concepts referring to the city based on social issues,
personal experiences and its visual language.
Design thinking, design skills, and public participation are
key tools and drivers for this project. They are all used as the
methodology to explore, analyze, visualize and respond to
the neighbourhood’s life and its people. The workshop aims
to encourage social change-makers within this community.
Once sensitised to their social and cultural context, participants
are encouraged to take an active and responsible role towards
a complex urban environment they live and work in.
The social design workshop is an initiative from andrews:degen,
a research-based graphic design agency located in Amsterdam,
the Netherlands. The workshop ‘Mapping the city - A creative
approach on...’ has already been conducted in more than 25
different cities around the world. For all the results please visit
www.mappingthecity.com.
We would like to thank the Goethe-Institut in Beirut,
the Beirut Design Week and Public Work Studio for making
this workshop happen.