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DECONSTRUCTING
BEIRUT'S RECONSTRUCTION: 1990 - 2000
Coming to Terms with the Colonial Heritage
An essay on a public lecture presented by Robert Saliba at Darat
al-Funun, Amman on April 19, 2000.
Endnotes
(1) Robert Saliba is an architect and planner, and
a post-graduate researcher at Oxford Brookes University's Joint
Center of Urban Design. He taught architecture and planning at a
number of Lebanese universities including the American University of
Beirut, the Lebanese University, and Université St. Joseph.
He also served as a planning consultant for the World Bank on a
number of studies related to Lebanon, and was a city planning
associate at the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los
Angeles.
He is the author of the monograph Beirut 1920 - 1940: Domestic
Architecture between Tradition and Modernity (Beirut: Order of
Engineers and Architects, 1998). He also has written a number of
scholarly articles on architecture and planning in Lebanon.
(2) Concerning the reconstruction of Beirut, see
Peter Rowe and Hashim Sarkis (eds.), Projecting Beirut: Episodes
in the Construction and Reconstruction of a Modern City (Munich
and New York: Prestel Publishing, 1998); Angus Gavin and Ramez Maluf, Beirut Reborn (London: Academy Editions, 1996); Samir
Khalaf and Philip Khoury, Recovering Beirut: Urban Design and
Post-War Reconstruction (New York and Leiden: American Bible
Society, 1993); and Friedrich Ragette (ed.), Beirut of Tomorrow:
Planning for Reconstruction (Beirut: The American University of
Beirut Press, 1983).
(3) Rafiq al-Hariri held the post of Lebanon's
Prime Minister from 1992 to 1998. He was re-elected to the post in
October 2001.
(4) For additional information concerning Solidere,
see http://www.solidere.com.lb/. This web site, which belongs to Solidere, provides relatively
detailed information on the company's program for the reconstruction
of the Beirut Central District.
(5) A more detailed discussion of these master
plans is provided in the Questions and Answers section of this
essay. Also, please see endnote (10) below.
(6) Schmid, Heiko, "The Reconstruction of
Downtown Beirut - Decision-Making, Participants and Public Opinion,"
unpublished paper, 1997. Mr. Schmid can be contacted at (heiko.schmid@urz.uni-heidelberg.de).
(7) Marwan Ghandour, "'That Secret is your
Phantasm': The Traditional in Architectural Offices," in Traditional
Dwellings and Settlements Working Papers Series, vol. 110
(1998).
(8) When Solidere was established in 1994, the
total value of its type A shares was assessed at 1.17 billion $US.
Moreover, 650 million $US of type B shares were offered for public
subscription. For additional information concerning the composition
of Solidere's shares, see http://www.solidere.com.lb/.
(9) Saliba provided a more detailed discussion of
the Elyssar project and the different approaches to reconstruction
being applied in Beirut in a presentation delivered to the Center
for the Study of the Built Environment's architectural forum, Diwan
al-Mimar, on April 20, 2000. His Diwan presentation will be
documented on this site in the forthcoming e-publication entitled
Emerging Trends in Urbanism: The Beirut Post-War Experience.
For additional information concerning the Elyssar project, see Mona
Harb el-Hak, "Urban Governance in Post-War Beirut: Resources,
Negotiations, and Contestations in the Elyssar Project," in S.
Shami (ed.), Capital Cities: Ethnographies of Urban Governance
in the Middle East (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
forthcoming).
(10) Saliba provided a more detailed discussion of
the different master plans that had been devised for Beirut in the
presentation he delivered to the Center for the Study of the Built
Environment's architectural forum, Diwan al-Mimar, on April 20,
2000. Concerning the forthcoming documentation of this presentation,
see note (9) above.
(11) For additional information concerning the
city as a mosaic of patterns, see Christopher Alexander, et al.,
A Pattern Language (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977). In this publication, Alexander and his colleagues at
the Center for Environmental Structure at the University of
California at Berkeley discuss the city as a pattern of a "mosaic
of subcultures." The book states that "the homogeneous and
undifferentiated character of modern cities kills all variety of
life styles and arrests the growth of individual character,"
and suggests enriching cultural life in the city by breaking it "into
a vast mosaic of small and different subcultures."
List of Figures
Figure 1: The first phase of
early modernization: Plan of Beirut during the late Ottoman period.
(Source: Robert Saliba)
Figure 2: Beirut during the
French Mandate period: The 1931 Danger master plan with the scheme
for the future Place de l'Etoile superimposed on the razed medieval
fabric of the inner city. (Source: Robert Saliba)
Figure 3: 1990 exercise on
'the memory of the city' carried out by Saliba and his students:
Mental image of pre-war Beirut as represented by the group whose
members were under 25 years of age. (Source: Morphological
Investigation of Downtown Beirut: Towards an Urban Design Framework.
The Department of Architecture, American University of Beirut,
1991.)
Figure 4: 1990 exercise on
'the memory of the city' carried out by Saliba and his students:
Mental image of pre-war Beirut as represented by the group whose
members were between 25 and 45 years of age. (Source: Morphological
Investigation of Downtown Beirut: Towards an Urban Design Framework.
The Department of Architecture, American University of Beirut,
1991.)
Figure 5: 1990 exercise on
'the memory of the city' carried out by Saliba and his students:
Mental image of pre-war Beirut as represented by the group whose
members were over 45 years of age. (Source: Morphological
Investigation of Downtown Beirut: Towards an Urban Design Framework.
The Department of Architecture, American University of Beirut,
1991.)
Figure 6: 1990 exercise on
'the memory of the city' carried out by Saliba and his students:
Synthesis of the mental images provided by the various age groups.
(Source: Morphological Investigation of Downtown Beirut: Towards an
Urban Design Framework. The Department of Architecture, American
University of Beirut, 1991.)
Figure 7: Map of Beirut
prepared by Schmid showing the war-destroyed fabric, the post-war
destroyed fabric, and the preserved fabric of the city. (Source:
Heiko Schimd.)
Figure 8: Historic
exteriors, modern interiors: The Foch-Allenby conservation area.
(Source: Solidere)
Figure 9: The
neo-traditional facades of the Saifi area. (Source: Solidere)
Figure 10: The new shops of
Suq Tawilah area in central Beirut. (Source: Solidere)
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