Biotope

Project idea

Biotope addresses the problem of public and green spaces, city fragmentation, water, air and soil pollution, waste management, and social, cultural and economic gaps.
Beirut is a port city - the port is its core economic support as well and its biggest threat given the outdated waste and resource management strategies. The silos explosion, economic collapse and COVID-19 pandemic are the three key events reinforcing the importance of such a project for Beirut.
The city is multi-layered in many ways- architecture being one of them and this post-explosion reconstruction phase presents itself as an opportunity to build a new layer of Beirut. Taking the disaster as the starting point the port reconstruction is now a platform for reinstating the sense of community and rebuilding the port as a place for people.

Project description

The project seeks to respond to the identified challenges and emphasizes sustainability and the reinterpretation of green public spaces as a key solution, portraying the concept of productive landscapes. The physical manifestation of the project is the unique infrastructure offering educational, cultural and housing platforms for social interaction and the act of connecting humans with nature. The economic value and opportunity lies in enhanced tourism and many job opportunities within the new centres.
Biotope inclines to challenge the future of living but also commemorating the blast as a trace - scar made to the city.

Shaping the new coastline was primarily guided by the intention to separate the cargo zone of the port as well as the passenger terminal from the developed waterfront. Public spaces in nature take the project's primacy in the form of a constructed wetland, urban gardens, arboretum, ecotone - green belt and promenade along the coast. The built area of the port is positioned as a linear extension of downtown Beirut embodied in the form of a city square, culture-research centre, commercial and hospitality zones and a marina. Housing is developed within the ecotone zone - the green belt separating the city and traffic infrastructure from the new waterfront. The green corridor take its primacy in the area following the wetland where it serves as an outdoor recreation and sports area and as a shield from the industrial zone of the port.

The constructed wetland, as the primary and spatial most dominant intervention fits in giving as a new dimension to the city of Beirut and plays an essential role in the sustainability concept of Biotope. This large-scale subsurface wetland system with vertical flow treats port wastewater- both blackwater and greywater. This water cycle serves as an efficient sustainable biofiltration system combined with an adequate primary treatment and followed by a tertiary system of disinfection- pathogen removal by the process of electrolysis. Wastewater is collected, filtered and finally used for irrigation of surrounding landscape and urban gardens. The wetland, for bye, provides flora and fauna habitat, where plants provide substrates for microorganism growth who decompose organic matter.

Technical information

The project focuses on a general and large-scale concept of integrating a wetland ecosystem to the city of Beirut. It focuses primarily on creating a sustainable vision of the future port of Beirut. The housing zone implements photobioreactors, solar panels and vertical gardening and functions as a sustainable system within a larger system.