PORT-CITY SUTURE

Project idea

The project in itself is a manifestation of the entity of Beirut, reaching out to a city buried over and over again, extending to its roots, connecting its public spaces, entangling what is vastly displaced and separated, Beirut as a whole, appears to be distorted divided, no district interaction, the city is vastly divided into neighborhoods that differ in their culture, architecture, and socio-economic status.
The port of Beirut is no different from these neighborhoods, it’s largely separated from all remaining districts and neighborhoods, with Charles El helou avenue presenting a major barrier, and presents an unidentified entangled relation with karantina that is poorly executed and seems to disrupt its nature and separate it from other neighborhoods…
Our idea is driven from this site study, serving us with questions regarding how to connect Beirut? How to connect zones that have been separated by poor execution and design? Is it possible to proceed with a mass scale project that involves Beirut as a whole and not just limited to the port and its entourage?... Questions that pose a particular chain of thinking that shows a proper engagement of a large-scale urban project. Beirut in particular no longer should be taken as individual zones developed separately, a strategy that put Beirut in its current separated state since the get go.

Project description

The idea of creating a unified city started out with the connection of Beirut with its Green Public spaces and seaside corniche, thus creating an urban green belt extending within Beirut and its coastal line leading at the end to the city’s port. This idea involved connecting Horch Beirut, Nahr Beirut, and Beirut’s Corniche, via green pathways in relation with the port.
The Green Belt forms an intertwined root system within all Beirut’s districts, via its roads and public spaces, simply by the act of planting trees, this action helps in creating a Lung for Beirut, a Complex breathing system, that allows the city to breath through its densely packed urban tissue, one that largely lacks any sight of greenery, (excluding horch Beirut), and mainly constituting of domino packed concrete boxes with no urban parks, spaces, nor proper infrastructure. This Green Belt acts as a suture sewing Beirut’s separated neighborhoods together like a needle with a thread joining two fabrics together, the thread being the green built formed by greenery, and the fabrics being the neighborhoods, carefully sutured together in critical zones being open public spaces which provide greater space for the belt.
The port then acts as the trunk of this root system, the end point at which all networks meet at, converting this port from its previous isolated entity, to an interacting port that is entangled with its surrounding neighborhoods, the belt allows to flood this greenery into the port, thus allowing public access to certain zones, in which transforms the port into a publicly interacting project that appears to be a part of the city.
“A part of the city”, is a statement that in a nutshell puts our desired objective toward the port project. An act to reinforce Beirut at its core, a city in whole, as a single entity, of which the port presents this option, a way paved to reconnect Beirut at its very soul, a soul that’s always been connected with its port throughout time.
Allowing the port to act as an urban hub, a public entity, while acting as a fully active industrial port, with neither activity interfering with the others ability to meet its purpose is revolutionary and crucial to achieve a fully interacted and intertwined Beirut.
Avenues, open public spaces, parks, sidewalks, empty lots, corniches,… all present the means necessary to allow us to establish a connectivity like no other with the vast area of the port, all intertwined together to reach the heart of the latter at the damaged silos, of which a memorial embracing the silos will conclude the journey of Beirut, one of which shall always serve as a reminder in every corner of the city, a journey that can start from Achrafieh, Chiyah, Ein El Rommene, Tarik el jdidi, Ein El Mraisi, Rawche, Mar Mkhayel… or any other neighborhood, yet all concluding at Beirut’s port memorial.

Technical information

The project is composed of rectangular volumes appearing to emerge from Charles El Helou Avenue (CHA) and directing towards the port’s memorial (damaged silos), with gradually descending greenery from both sides of each volume, interacting with similar areas behind CHA. This intervention was made to achieve an integration and continuity from the city’s visual axis toward the port and its green lots behind CHA, an interaction which allows it to be a median between city and port, with CHA acting as an avenue, station, parking, and connector to the port via vaults that cross from the station’s inner structure to the ports new descending greenery, and continuing as a pedestrian circulation with the rest of the port, thus achieving a connection intertwined with the city, CHA, and the new port.
The visual axis allowed to create a form of continuity and circulation with the port, the former being distributed throughout Beirut’s inner districts. They continue to extend in the port defining certain functions, such as a visual axis leading to the view of the memorial silos, towards the mechanical functioning of the port, to an open piazza showing social activities, etc.…These axis also helped in directing the volumes of the new port, in a sense that appears to steer towards the memorial, of which its island gives it a certain serenity, one of which magnifies its importance with its remaining standing silos, which are unrivaled by any of the new volumes, leaving it the sole vertical element in the project.
Karantina’s industrial/residential character allowed establishing a unique and clear connection with the port, with CHA no longer acting as a barrier separating Karantina from remaining districts and neighborhoods, and its visual axis interacting with the port via “Khoder” street and “Ibrahim Basha” street, all allowed Karantina to become a port interacting neighborhood.
The emerging volumes do not exceed 18m of height, for the purpose of not affecting the city skyline nor the silos magnitude, and in an effort to create a gradually descending skyline from Achrafieh’s hill to the ports coast, one that allows to conceptually achieve a relation between sky, hill, coast, and ocean…
As mentioned before, the purpose of the project is to establish a port city connection, one that’s been absent in Beirut’s districts, yet achievable by opening part of the port to public activity and interaction, with it also being a fully active industrial port.

Documentation

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