Reassembled from pieces

Project idea

Ideology and symbols

Sorrow

There is a memorial park in my project, where I marked with the Sculpture the point of the explosion that took place there. Sculpture is a conditional female image, the body forming the form of an embryo. Looking at this sculpture, a sympathetic viewer is likely to experience the emotions of grief and sadness, loss, vulnerability and sensitivity of a fragile life in the face of a cold death, without reason, emotions and being as such. The girl's body, as it were, depicts "folding" - the emotion of an existential crisis that we experience when experiencing grief. In this state, we always want to curl up into a ball, cross our limbs. As if mourning creates an inner void, a black hole that sucks us back out of existence into chaos. It starts the reverse course of internal time - not from the simplicity of non-existence to the complexity of life, but back. Simplify, collapse, collapse.
This metaphor seems appropriate even in comparison with the Big Bang Theory - after all, there was also an explosion. A concentrated black dot of infinite mass and density and nothing around is the archetype of my proposal for organizing a memorial.

Ruin

The ruin in the context of a modern city has an important symbolic meaning. It returns to the events of the past, helps to touch the theme of eternity or experienced tragedy. Ruins as traces of the past can serve not only as a background for new architecture, but also be part of the overall composition of a modern building.
In my project, I propose to preserve the ruin of an industrial storage - after the explosion, the beauty of its internal structure was revealed in the form of tall narrow cylinders.

In it, I propose to make an opening in order to increase the area of ​​interaction with it, and through this opening to orient the sculpture of sorrow to the beacon of light, linking the space of the park and the building into a single visual scenario.


Light source
In addition to the sculpture and the ruin, my project has an element of light that shoots up from the top of the lighthouse.
I design the lighthouse as a symbol of landmark, harbor and unity. The very shape of the lighthouse resembles a tree, rooted in water and woven as if from separate elements, tends to rise and ends with a column of light. It is also an important symbol for the city. After all, Beirut is a place with an acute socio-political situation and a diverse, mosaic and colorful cultural context.

There are about 30 registered religions here, and they all live side by side in a fairly dense building, so, of course, there are a lot of conflicts and disagreements in society, a complex representative system in the government.

However, when the explosion thundered and everyone, regardless of religion, forgetting past feuds, took to the streets to help each other. In such a terrible way, but society has somewhat rallied. So the lighthouse in this project is an allegory of unity and a common guide to a better life, which all Lebanese people yearn for, regardless of cultural affiliation.

Picked up from pieces
Residents say that together they assembled the city literally “piece by piece” - when I heard this, I realized that I wanted to reflect this in architecture. A space that would show the unity and diversity of the creative environment of Beirut - mosaic and “fragmentation”.
Equality when possible to express the uniqueness of each direction.
There are no tombs in my project, but there is the concept of “Shards” and “Mosaics”, behind which there is a complex system of struggle between unity and differences. So I decide to decorate the foyer hall in my sea terminal in the form of an eastern dome, consisting of a metal frame of longitudinal profiles and transverse rings, into which fragments of a stained-glass type of mosaics of about 300 by 300 mm are supposed to be embedded. Each mosaic can be made by a separate master, expressing his idea there. All this will be illuminated through the dome, forming a light warm variegation in the atmosphere of the entrance foyer.

Project description

I developed a project for the reconstruction of the passenger terminal of this port, my task was to connect the former industrial coast with the historical center of the city and turn it into a public space, perpetuate the memory of the August 4th event.

1. The building is a platform raised to a height of 6 m with a park. It passes over the land transport hub, connecting the fabric of the historic district of Beirut cut by it with the territory of the seaport - the task of combining the port with the public space of the city is also set for the contestants. Gradually, towards the coast, the platform rises to the lighthouse, which stands on the line of contact with the coast. In the space between the rising platform and the ground, there is a multifunctional building, the core of which is the passenger terminal of the sea station. The pitch of the columns is 9 meters. The waiting room and related infrastructure are located on the second floor. From there, passengers immediately get to the landscaped pier, where the passenger ship moored. At the top of the lighthouse is an observation deck. On the lighthouse, walkers can go down to the base and go out to the green area, where public, retail spaces are located, offices and housing are possible. The shape of the building is determined by the radius of the same explosion that thundered in the port in 2020. This helps visitors to visualize the scale of the past event. It does not leave without a trace, but leaves an imprint on the fabric of the city.
2. This area ends with a memorial park, the center of which is the bay formed as a result of the explosion. In its center is a memorial sculpture of memory. The ruin has been preserved, it has a passageway with a stepped bench and landscaping inside. The passage connects the lighthouse and the memorial sculpture into a single visual axis

Technical information

Bearing frame - combined, with stiffening cores
Building system - monolithic
Structural system
- a grid of columns with a monolithic reinforced concrete core. The stair-lift assembly is located in the stiffening core. The pitch of the columns is uniform - 9000mmx9000mm, the section of the columns in the plan is 600x600, monolithic cores have walls 400mm thick.
Stability of the building: ensured by the joint work of columns and stiffening cores, which are united by reinforced concrete discs of interfloor floors and roofing

Foundation
The foundation is a 1000 mm thick slab placed on a pile field. Under the foundation slab, a one-layer coating of polymeric waterproofing and a deposited rolled waterproofing material prepared from a cement-sand mortar (B75 concrete), 100 mm thick, are provided.
Interfloor ceilings of the above-ground part
Interfloor disks of floors are made of monolithic reinforced concrete 300 mm thick, the step of the load-bearing structures of the floor with a regular step of 9000mmx9000mm between the axes. Floor thickness 250mm.

Roof structure. Drain organization
The roof is exploitable, on which landscaping will be carried out in the future (organization of footpaths and landscaping elements). The roof slab is solid, made of monolithic reinforced concrete with a further installation of a classic insulated membrane roof with a sloped layer in the range of 1.5-3%, with a load of a soil layer 1500 mm thick and paving slabs on a cement-sand mortar. Drainage from the roof is organized into intercepting drainage trays with water intake ladders with horizontal outlets.
The roof is unexploited, it is a bent shell, which rests on trusses of the same shape, the height of the truss is 1/10 of the span, i.e. 900mm, with a step of 9000mm. The roof covering is deaf with glazing inserts. The structure of the roof covering is made of sandwich panels, lined with aluminum.

Drainage from the roof is organized, along the perimeter of the roof there are drainage trays, which are connected to vertical storm water pipes.

When designing the adjacent territory, I took into account the design proposals of the winners of a similar competition for professionals