Cultural Nexus: The New Port of Beirut

Project idea

With the arrival of the PLO Palestinian guerrillas in 1970, the phrase "Every vestige of culture is a vestige of barbarism" embodies the decadent situation that Lebanon will suffer for more than 40 years due to social, cultural and religious conflicts.These wars caused a segregation in Beirut that ends up being reflected in the development of the city.

The main problem was the fragmentation of the different activities to be carried out during the day, As a solution to this problem, we work under the concept of Kintsugi, which is a Japanese technique that consists of repairing breaks or fragments with gold. In the proposed case, our gold will be both the port of Beirut and the new green spaces.

Project description

In order to develop our kintsugi, it is taken into account that in Beirut are several urban elements that are perceived negatively by its inhabitants, and some of these components are directly or indirectly linked to the port, which owns an imposing space within the city.Therefore, 3 of these elements are selected and reinterpreted.

They will become antonyms of their initial perception to generate a great cultural unifying axis between the city and the port. These components are:

1) The green line, which emerged as a result of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975.
2) The historic center of Beirut.
3) The ruins of the silos, from the massive explosion in 2020.

Technical information

The port was divided into 2 main areas:
1) The port area
2) The cultural and entertainment area.

To generate a clear separation between the two, a break in the dam is proposed which separates the specialized boat entrances from the port and the private boat entrances for entertainment.

In our cultural island, programs such as: aquarium, art museum, natural science museum and scientific research center are implemented. On the other hand, the silos memorial is generated with a boulevard viewpoint, a memorial museum and a comercial zone that integrated to connect all the programs.

Documentation

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