Coastless Beirut
4th year Architectural Design Option Studio, WS 2020-21
Department of Architecture, University of Patras - GR



Paris of the East
Beirut at the crossroads of three continents -Europe, Asia and Africa- has been a trading and cultural hub for centuries. A lively, manifold, haphazard Mediterranean city, Beirut is diachronically defined by emergencies and conflicts, traumas and changes. Mirroring its diverse, cosmopolitan background. Beirut’s architecture and urban ecosystem are shaped by various cultures and practices ranging from the Phoenicians, Romans and Greeks, to Ottomans, French, reaching the International modernist era. Beirut is a palimpsest of roman ruins, Christian monasteries, colonial architecture, iconic modernist landmarks, mountainous skyline and a spectacular coast on the Mediterranean.

04.08.2020
In the last year, besides the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic, Lebanon is facing a colossal banking and political crisis. On August 4th, 2020 it only took a couple of seconds for the massive explosion on Beirut’s port to ravage 40% of the city’s urban and social fabric causing more harm than the infamous 15-year civil war (1975-1990), erasing the past, present, and destroying future aspirations. According to UNDP, 200.000 housing units were affected by the explosions, with an estimated 40.000 buildings damaged, of which 3.000 severely.

Coastless Beirut
For over a century Beirut’s waterfront acted as the city’s main landmark, the symbolic image that made its unique identity. Since the 1990s post-war reconstruction, the entire city and its waterfront appear available for speculative development. Once-protected shores have been gradually subdivided, natural formations effaced by ever extending piers, land exploitation ratios increased, the city’s garbage and buildings’ demolition debris piling up in the embankments, that were created throughout the civil war, giving way to development projects. Thus, war-induced urbanization, reconstruction-justified urbanization, have resulted into the total occupation of the coast and the ongoing disappearance of waterfront public space. Until the August blast, the vast majority of the waterfront had been either replaced by private marinas and upscale resorts, or polluted by landfills and sewers. Beirut’s coastal territory takes increasingly, the form of an urban sprawl, unreasonably diffused and informal, an ever-expanding landfill of silt and effluent on the shores of the Mediterranean.

City by the Sea: recovery & reconstruction
The studio shall reflect on the legendary ever expanding East Mediterranean port city characterized by diversity and conflict, unpredictability and inertia, and will reimagine its coast as a continuous, accessible, and shared open space through new architectures that bear political, cultural, social and economic meanings in the wider realm of a geographic territory. We shall focus on a selection of sites along the coastline, mapping and analysing history and context, existing conditions and phenomena, iconic architecture and unrealised plans. We will investigate the historical roots of ownership of the city’s coast versus today’s loss of urban commons, aiming to contribute to the on-going debate on the possibilities of inclusive cities and affordability. Our investigation will set out questions: What are the driving forces behind an emergent reconstruction? What is the vision for a city of many cultures in need? Can we design new ways of living and working by the Mediterranean? Responding to a society distressed en masse, our projections could entail: affordable housing, spaces of worship, centres of care, tourism infrastructures…

Design Research Initiator & Head, Studio Instructor
Demetra Katsota 
Professor of Architectural Design DoAUP

Teaching Associates
Naji Assi
Constantinos Petrakos

Regular Critic
Paul Kaloustian

Research Team
Panayiotis Almpanis
Constantina Angelopoulou
Mary Assimakopoulou
Eftichia Bourdakou
Ioanna Chadjiphotiou
Marina Kapetanaki
Iris Lintovoi
Andreas Makentoudes
Anastassia Nikolaou
Evangelos Paxinos
Chryssostome Reizis
Manto Souliotes
Kyriakos Tofitzikis
Sonia Tsakni
Florentia Xanthakou

Platform Coordinator
Anna Biza

Coastal Domains Design Research
Department of Architecture, University of Patras - GR
2016-2021

During fall semester 2020-21, Coastless Beirut is the eighth architectural design option studio of the Coastal Domains interdisciplinary, independent design research at the Department of Architecture of the University of Patras (DoAUP). Since 2016 and through a multitude of case studies on targeted coastal territorial contexts, the initiative explores, records, assesses, and envisions sustainable futures for the North-eastern Mediterranean coastal territories. Coastal Domains aims to study the Coastal Landscape as a critical subject of architecture. The activities of the Coastal Domains initiative are grounded in a rigorous and extensive territorial analysis of specific geographical contexts, focusing on complex forms and means of representation.

Contact
katsota@upatras.gr


Image: Marwan Rechmaoui , Beirut by the Sea, 2019
concrete, beeswax & copper on wood