Revolt Against Bladders Leash

Your Public right to a Public Toilet

"A nation is judged by its toilets, it's one of the first images tourists and visitors get and we should generally be ashamed in this country" stated Greed when discussing the case of the UK! Imagine what she would say about Beirut.

Did you ever walk anywhere or were driving and had to drive like a maniac to sneak into a coffee shop's toilet and exit shamefully? If you do not live in a 10 minute radius of any of your outings the chance is the answer to this question is yes. Where do you go and what do you do in Beirut when you need to use the toilet?

I decided to investigate this in one of our only public spaces in Beirut, the Corniche.

The case of Beirut’s Corniche

The Corniche is a seaside promenade offering visitors a view of the Mediterranean and the mountains. The Corniche a beautiful space that people in Lebanon can access and spend the day regardless of their economic backgrounds and their purchase ability. However this site lacks adequate public services that will facilitate your stay  for longer than an hour.

On Sundays and holidays the Corniche is packed and let’s face it it’s the only place in Beirut where people can spend the day without paying for entrance, seats, parking … During the week the Corniche is also congested with passersby that spend an average of an hour walking, sitting, contemplating. Couples meet there and of course the joggers during sunrise and sunset fill the space. Families that try to provide their children with a space to spend some time outside their apartments also frequent the Corniche after sunset during the week and all day during the holidays and Sundays.

Public toilet 1

Toilets on the Corniche

So I decided to first ask two young women seated  close to what I thought was the only public toilet in the area if they ever had the urge to use the toilet while on a visit. They looked up at me worried and thought I needed a toilet and said “oh I am so sorry but you should try to hold it in and if you are desperate there is a very dirty and smelly toilet just behind us in between the two streets.” I smiled nodded and thanked them.

MIXED TENURE : "بناية الأشباح “ The Ghosts Building"

Walking around Hamra today and seeing the new and under construction building stock I feel that we have already lost the social and economic heterogeneity in Hamra. Today the building stock is made up 220 to 350m2 net areas for each apartment. In addition each ‘high-end' apartment has its own core (elevator + staircase). The building law has set up through its formulas of allowable net and gross areas a homogeneous building stock for what used to be one of the most diverse areas in Beirut.

Original image taken as part of a research project in AUB 2003 with BASTA

The flowing is a snapshot of a mixed tenure building in Beirut.


X star narrative:

X star is nicknamed "بناية الأشباح “ , the ghosts building". There is a rumor that the walls speak and talk about the fleeting partitions, gazes, and the eroticism of friction, movement, proximity, contact, suspicion, and an attempt at obliviousness.

The three by three meter grid on the facade produced by the generic balconies and vertical concrete partitions entice the passer by with voyeuristic gazes from the semi transparent balcony doors. Different intensities of light, saturation of color, transparency, amount of laundry, and exhibited utilitarian objects, fragment the screen and hint at the invisible affairs of the separated partitions. The ephemeral is the myth of the building.

It is illegal to rent a room for less than a month. Yet that can happen. Prices may range from hour, day,  month

Its assembly has been composed due to the economic, political, and contextual pressures of Ain Al Mressieh, which had introduced the diverse users in one space. The context allows the ability for different users to exist with close proximity to each other, while still maintaining the capacity to define themselves, and shape their routine and movement; not only in reaction to the 'other' but also in relation to their existing habits. This makes the assemblage unique. Proximity does not enforce contact; and the characters traits create specific perceptions of their spaces in which they move around and engulf or are engulfed by them. The building seems to house misplaced individuals, all with different backgrounds, that occupy the space on the margins of the center. Fragments of contradictions, produce within the building a set of momentary veins (relationships), pulsing with emotions and reactions intoxicated by the constant redefinition of the 'other'.

Original image taken as part of a research project in AUB 2003 with BASTA

In between the structural grid and the endlessly repeated compartments, is a building, drunk by the life of its characters, creating architecture.

In the romanticizing of the building that encompasses and defies boundaries and zones that separate user groups, I find myself having introduced my fascination and intrigue with the social relationships produced. This de-zoning of the space functions with user groups that discriminate against each other, but through a continuous negotiation of space, and fluidity of experiences, continue to live within the same building.

Living within a city that used to allow this mix to occur, I find that the utilization of this phenomenon is a missed opportunity. At no point am I suggesting that this mix will enforce any type of relationship, but rather I do the opposite in highlighting my interest in how proximity will not impose connection. None the less I recognize that it injects the chance of an encounter.

Original image taken as part of a research project in AUB 2003 with BASTA

 

Vertical Towers of Green: Skyscrapers of Food in Beirut

In July, a show in Lebanon aired on TV, “Kalam el-Nas” on LBC that informed and documented the state of our food production quality in its varying processes. It seems we water our fruits and vegetables with sewage directly among other major hygienic problems.  An increase in the death of citizens due to food poisoning and an active Facebook page 'Food poisoning victims of Lebanon' keeps this topic alive. Without discussing the restaurant hygiene standards,  controlling where and what we purchase of fresh food products,  with the current population cost and  temperature rise has become nearly impossible.

               Part  of Kalam al Nas report

To add to the problem of our unhygienic food production a previous entry entitled “Food Security: Can global food production be increased?”  indicated that Lebanon needs to increase food production by  three times the total area of the country and therefore increase the currently existing agriculture land by about 5 times to be self sufficient. http://goo.gl/rCRV9.

 

Moreover the Food Security indicators of Lebanon’s agriculture instead of increasing show a steady and clear decrease. Considering food is a basic human right for nutrition food security policies and plans need to take a forefront in our demands. Moreover healthy and clean food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods need to be affordable and accessible to all. 

The need to tackle food security and sovereignty in all its aspects is clear, yet, what to do, how to act, what to propose to increase access to good quality food, seem less clear in the case of Lebanon. Vertical farming in this case, similar to the world, might be a viable option to help grow the food needed to support the growing population and provide the existing one with healthy clean food. 

The case of Beirut:

If Beirut used all its public sites as sites where a network of vertical farms  can proliferates several aspects will be covered. These my include 

1-     No weather related crop failures 

2-     Introduces urban agriculture in amounts that are relevant to the need of production.

3-     Control quality of food production

4-     Public land tenure is secure and may be secured by a government decree

5-     Reduces the need for transportation of produce 

6-     Control price of the raw food products as they are planted on government owned land

URBAN HERITAGE AND ITS POLITICS :THE GRAND THEATER in Beirut

image by Caroline Tabet of Theater of Beirut ground, mezzanine and first floor seating from stage

Our insistence to remember the value of heritage and the built environment has impelled us to continue to question the reconstruction of the downtown area in Beirut. Recently images of the partial destruction of the grand theater in Beirut created a mass of rumors that resulted in nothing else but that. The recent demolition of a section of the Grand Theater complex was perceived by many as a prelude to the demolition of the entire building.

image by Habib Battah of the back building on the same block as Grand Theater Beirut

Solidere informed everyone that they are only removing parts that are not 'valuable', specifically the block attached to the theater, and will rebuild and so on. First let us establish that in such cases the  government is accountable and  not Solidere, a private company. Having said that I do not approve how and what the private company has established. Yet I think that we have over exhausted our rumors and need to publicly debate and critically evaluate heritage and reconstruction. Issues of ownership of heritage buildings need to be dealt with, and addressing questions such as :

image by Caroline Tabet of Theater of Beirut from mezzanine looking towards the stage

Who heritage is for?
Why and to whom is it significant ?
How do we decide what to preserve?
What and how do the tensions of global historic preservation agendas fostered by international donors affect the embeddedness of monuments in local historical and social contexts?
How much do public initiatives play a role in urban heritage and preservation?
How much of the recreation of the past in the present is a political act that we should avoid by integrating heritage preservation in the present and the future instead?
Do we preserve a building spatial production and program or its facade as a poster?
Do we preserve an urban quarter or just a building?
Most importantly what are the implications of such decisions on local and national economies? 

READY FOR THE RISE

in1000 years a large part of Lebanon's coast will be under water

The future of Lebanon’s coastal cities and their flood mitigation and sea rise plans are affected by two main things:

1-  The constantly and drastically changing environment causing the rise in sea levels, increase in storms and their frequency, sinking landmasses and wild waves are all some results we are observing constantly among others.

2-  Planning disabilities that contain lack of funding, long  time periods plans with no direct encouraging results, unclear understanding of issues and results, lack of management and communication between diverse stakeholders…

None of us today can forget the images of Hurricane Katrina or the recent tsunamis. Our coastlines are much denser today and are growing so the scale of disaster we will face is drastic.  Yet avoiding such disasters even some of which will appear in as far as 1000 years may be managed in a positive manner starting today.  (previous blog entry maps 1000 years water rise effect on Beirut. http://goo.gl/HXjWb)

Current condition of sea level in relation to Lebanon

I will highlight several strategies to ‘overcome’ the reality of loosing  coastal communities that  are an intrinsic part of our histories, contribute to the  economy, and are home to millions of residents .  These strategies are long term plans and are sometimes used in fragments on some areas and are governed by funding and investors.  To avoid the coastal areas drowning these strategies nee to be used on all the coast.

The main three strategies presented are

1-      RESIGN: phased out abandonment of the coastal city area of Beirut

2-      OVERPOWER: land reclamation to build habitable dam types

3-      INTEGRATE: floating a city: new types of development

in1000 years a large part of Beirut's coast will be under water that is if we do not get a tsunami before

LET IT RISE

ATLANTIS source http://atlantis.haktanir.org/ch3.html

The idea of inhabiting the planets oceans and seas is a fascinating one that has been dealt with by designers and philosophers for centuries. Noah’s Ark, Atlantis, and most recently movies such as Water world have all dealt with inhabiting the water . Today land reclamation, dam habitations, and floating structures exist but remain underplayed in the urban planning and development strategies of flood mitigation in coastal cities. 

The Mediterranean sea will rise between 10mm to 20mm/ year on the coast of Lebanon in its best case scenario!

 Yet flood mitigation and utopic dreams of inhabiting the waters might become a must with the continuous rise of the sea levels. Strong evidence shows that global sea level will rise at an increased rate due to thermal expansion of ocean water and of the melting of land ice. Bindoff et al. (2007) states that Global sea level has been rising at a rate of 1.7mm/yr during the 20th century, and increased to a rate of 3mm/yr since. Specifically, the Mediterranean Sea, during the 21st century, is expected to become saltier and rise drastically (Marcos and Tsimplis 2008).  The map above shows a rise around the coast of Lebanon of about 10mm/year! This will imply that if we do not start dealing with the sea level rise a large part of Beirut will become under water by the next millennium. 

Beirut coast line today Beirut coast line in 1000 years

The next few entries will address Beirut, a coastal city situated along the Eastern Mediterranean coast at 33.5°N and 35.5°E.  Beirut's location and environmental condition sets it in the zone that will rise between 10 to 20mm/year in the best case scenario.  To start understanding this rise and the effects a look at Beirut's topography is required. Mapping the rise of the Mediterranean on Beirut. regarding its topography displays the results. The results are shocking and yet we remain unaware of them. What can we do and how can we build and plan our cities for the centuries to come?

Downtown Beirut in the next millenniums

 The reality of losing  coastal communities that  are an intrinsic part of our histories, contribute to the  economy, and are home to millions of residents should awaken us. Moreover, this should encourage us to start thinking of the future of our cities . The following entries are designed to provoke longer term thinking across a wide audience: from architects to government, to policy-makers, to planners, engineers and the general public.

References

Bindoff, N.L., J. Willebrand, V. Artale, A, Cazenave, J.M. Gregory, S. Gulev, K. Hanawa, C. Le Quéré, S. Levitus, Y. Nojiri, C.K. Shum, L.D. Talley, and A.S. Unnikrishnan. 2007. Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor, and H.L. Miller, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Marcos, M. and Tsimplis, M.N. 2008. Comparison of results of AOGCMs in the Mediterranean Sea during the 21st century. Journal of Geophysical Research C: Oceans, 113 (12), art. no. C12028.

Water privatization in Lebanon

Mapping Lebanese Rivers

Water privatization touches on many intriguing and conflictual debates such as public versus economic good, monopolies, human rights and government failures in provision of services. The lists of incentives or the lack of them for the market to provide for the low income areas are obvious.

 If I were to debate this issue in theory, I would definitely agree on the dangers of turning a public need into an economic good controlled by efficient yet financially guided partners.

However, in the midst of a continuous debate in Lebanon about water and electricity privatization I found my position less definite

Demonstrators burn tires to block roads in  south Beirut, which have suffered extensive electricity and water cuts. (Hugh Macleod/IRIN) http://electronicintifada.net/content/politicized-power-cuts-behind-deadly-riots/7328

 

AIR-scape urbanism: Building Green 'Infrastructure'

In a previous blog entry ' Beirut is Ill' http://goo.gl/M33Bm we established that for Beirut to become a healthy city and achieve the 10m2/person of public green space required by the World Health Organization it will have to destroy 41% of the existing city!

This is because The World Health Organization has established indicators for what makes a city healthy and it ultimately arrives at a statistic of 10 meter square of public green-space per person and 40 meter square of private green space per person. For more details about Beirut's numbers and how it compares to other cities please refer to blog entry 'Beirut is ill' http://goo.gl/M33Bm.  

 

Cities across the world are trying to meet these criteria in order to be included in the network of healthy cities. But these criteria ultimately reflect the European cities that they are drawn from, which were planned and designed after the Renaissance.

Moreover, the assumption that green space must accumulate into large-scale spaces in order to optimize public usage reflects a western stereotype of space utilization. 



Cities where public green spaces were not designed in adequate amounts need to address and  challenge the possibilities of inserting public green space. In the case of Beirut we need to dream BIG. Do we destroy or build for green?

Instead of demolishing, I Propose to grow and proliferate a green space from within the city. It accepts the density of Beirut and exacerbates it. It creates a new dimension of urban experience—airscape—which comes not from the clearing of history but from a new encounter with it. This productive green space is proposed as Beirut‘s second reconstruction, a productive stage for the city to improve its public health.

Green infrastructure DESIGN STRATEGY:

 Air rights are appropriated over the whole city.

 

  Public building and sites Roofs

Roofs of public & semi-public buildings are occupied for public roof gardens with side access. All public spaces in the city are also appropriated, including public sites (such as archaeological sites), public gardens (such as the three parks I showed earlier) and public buildings (such as mosques and churches). 

vertical links to public green roofs

  
Distribute
 

This will create dispersed green rooftops that will not amount for more than a 0.5% increase in public green space. Therefor a green pedestrian network that connects them giving each neighborhood a pocket garden is encouraged.  There will have to be a vertical connection to the network every 250 meters.

These dispersed greens establish a datum over the city which traverses its political divisions.

 
Re-frame and Connect


This decline of traditional public park space is also opportunity for the rise of a new kind of green space—a productive green space, rather than a contemplative one.  The pathways are meant to be understood as a new and much needed infrastructure for the city that includes pedestrian pathways, bike lanes, pocket gardens, a possibility of an air train and most importantly a productive green space from which the neighborhoods may partially feed themselves.

The varying vegetation schemes in the city will generate and intensify a series of green surface experiences in the air creating a mini eco-system and present the paradoxical notion that as diversity increases both in nature and society so might  cohesion. 

Dreaming BIG about green infrastructure will result in large amounts of construction. Lets face it construction is not so green and so this will have to be a long term plan to move people up into a new type of transportation in the air (bike- air trains- pedestrian in green lines)  . By 2050 people might give up their cars and move-up into this mode of transportation. This might also then allow us to plant the ground. 

Martyr square

Martyr square is a public square in downtown Beirut,Lebanon. Its history is the story of Lebanon, eventful and dramatic. The story of this square starts in the 1920s and today awaits  in limbo.
This entry will be a short photo-history of the square. The text will only be in caption form:

 

BASHOURA cemetery's airspace

Beirut maps highlighting cemetery location by an outline:                                                                                                          Map1 1876 - Map2 1919- Map3 1964- Map4 1994- Map5 2011

Bashoura's built space to open air ratio is one of the least shocking in relationship to Beirut's other neighborhoods. This is mainly attributed to the large historic cemetery that creates a breathing space in the middle of the dense neighborhood.  Yet when the cemetery was planned it was surrounded by plantations; today it is surrounded by apartment buildings. The cemeteries location today actually allows the neighborhood fresh air, ventilation space, and direct sunlight.

 

Photo by Sandra Rishani 2009. A void in the city. Bashoura Beirut cemetery

Today urban cemeteries are increasingly viewed as amenity landscapes that may provide charming and ecological values to the communities that surround them. However, cemeteries have historically been seen as sacred spaces; people are, after all, laid to rest in them. At the time of their establishment, most cemeteries were typically a fringe-belt land. Established on what were the outskirts of the built-up areas, many cemeteries are now surrounded by dense urban development. Aside from small religious buildings and family plots, cemeteries were seldom planned as an urban land use.

Several reasons for ignoring this very spatial land use come to mind. In the nineteenth century, municipal governments saw burial grounds as potential health hazards. In addition, 'cemeteries, even those privately owned and operated for profit, are mostly not typically subject to property taxes, so they provide little municipal revenue'.

For planners, the most frustrating open spaces to contemplate are the cemeteries of the city. Together, they take up a large amount of space.... I have toyed with the thought of all of the good things that could be done with the land were there a relocation effort and also explored the airspace over sanctified grounds, but UNDERSTAND  that this might be a politically and religiously explosive matter.  Yet this should not prevent us from investigating on this blog the possibilities of cemeteries and their air space.  

 

In Bashoura the cemetery has become overwhelmed by graves covered by their marble top. Its dead occupants have taken over the site and turned it all into a marbled raised ground. Two large trees only exist on the site. Even though as is the site already creates a breathing space for the neighborhood, inspired by the plug in 1960s, I wonder may we ‘respectively’  takeover its airspace and hang from cranes along its walls large plant holders to green the Grey open space?

'Plug in'  plant and tree holders. Bashoura Beirut

Floating trees. Bashoura Beirut Lebanon

Greening the Grey with Plug ins that take over scared grounds airspace.

Could designing garden\public space, a physical program that has historically been rooted in the grounds surface be re-conceived in order to maintain significant sites while accommodating growth? 

 

The possibility of such a plug in light infrastructure that can add green to all those sacred grounds without moving them may be intriguing.   Nevertheless, if this is not possible for now, cemeteries such as Bashoura which are already nearly full should be accessible to the public. With a city like Beirut in which public space is so scarce cant we have a walk, read a book or just respectively relax on a tombstone?  IF the city consciously decides to open up such spaces the cemetery edges and entrances may be re-planned to allow easy access to the residents of Beirut.

Behind “the pink house”

Around the Pink House

I watched again one of my favorite Lebanese movies. For everyone that has not seen it yet pick up a copy or at-least read about it. 

This blog entry will discuss the  movie, “Around the Pink House” that highlights how post war policies on the macro level regarding reconstruction and the internally displaced affected people’s ability to recover from the war. The ambition of this entry  is to highlight the importance of personal narratives and experiences within spatially just reconstruction plans and policies, which were disregarded, and shows how the top down macro scale decisions continue to disturb the post-war geography of the city. 

Documenting the invisible struggles:

The movie begins with a day to day event interrupted by a traffic jam in a neighborhood with men in uniform running in-between the cars. The scene of daily life mixed with a scene of militias and day to day war scenes highlights a confused and forced transition from the war period to the post war period. The people stuck in the traffic are not disturbed by the militia men running through and are discussing an explosion that is shown on a television in a cafe.  

This starts the conversation about reconstruction and what this new type of city destruction will bring to the residents of the city. One man in a  café proposes that the new plan for a new ‘world’ city is going to save the neighborhood with an upsurge in the economy.

 

 

The movie then focuses on the pink house by showing us a man looking into the day to day activities and windows of the houses residents.  We see the the pink house in the activities of its residence.  

The camera slows down several times during the movie; the music becomes eerie and shifts into the private moments of the characters. The moments only share a common house, the pink house,  but their memories and thoughts are varied all affected by the trauma and displacement of the war.   

These portraits create multiple narratives that show that the groups opinions about post war reconstruction were not based on peoples religions but on their a geo-political locations  and outlook on social justice.

Around the Pink House - screen shots

 

Occupying the urban landscape: Burj-el-Murr

A serene sacred monolith stands still in Beirut’s continuously changing urban fabric. This 40 story unfinished tower dominates the skyline of down-town Beirut.

The unfinished building is about 35 years old now. Its construction started in 1974 and by 1975, the start of the Lebanese civil war, 28 of its floors were built. Despite the unrest, the work continued until the whole structure was erected.

The building was structurally daring relying on a hollow tube concrete structure with its facades as the load bearing walls braced by the core buildings shear walls. It was firm enough to withstand the weapons used on the battle-field and to continue to exist as an icon in the post war period. 

Its height, location and facade treatment and structure made this an ideal sniper location. It created a type of panoptic war tactic which drew an imaginary urban circle of about 2.2 km  of fear around it.

After the war a post construction boom took place. Sites and buildings were either erased and reconstructed or developed a new. The Murr tower's problem or advantage is that it is too high to topple and too solid to implode making its erasure problematic and expensive.

This concrete artifact originally meant to be an office tower was only used as a sniper outpost.

Today it stands filled with disturbing memories, horror stories and scars rising to the sky. What is to become of this structure and what should become of it has been an issue to many in Beirut? In the mean time it stands as an unused tower.

Proposal

 

With the past blog post, Beirut is ill: The WHOs 'Healthy City Networks',

( http://spatiallyjustenvironmentsbeirut.blogspot.com/2011/07/beirut-is-ill-whos-healthy-city.html ) showed that the required public green  space required for Beirut is extremely scarce. We need to start dreaming of possibilities for  new public green spaces.  Green spaces have a range of functions and types of which not all need to be equally physically accessible. Access may range from the climate change results they cause in terms of oxygen production and or food production, ecological variety, visual access, or physical contact access among other types.

 What I propose for Burj-el-Murr , which is structurally viable, is a landscape of green.

 The Burj’s east and west facade is made of 6 equally placed and sized windows on each floor. The strategy is simple, a range of bush type plants or trees to be placed on each of the widows from inside with guidance to the exterior.   

The result might just be a vertical mountain or wall of green that will overtake the sacred monolith of Beirut.

The project proposal will require an efficient watering system and maintenance system but its result will be immeasurable on the street and urban scale among others. 

The hill will grow on itself and slowly decompose the building. After 50 years when the mound is more or less fully grown the exterior may become habitable in some form and the building will be lost.


Original Images 
by  Ramiabikhalil  http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/davies/arch671/winter2007/students/abou/RamiAbouKhalil_ThesisDescription.pdf
by Centrifugador
all collages  by sandra rishani