My final year project: Comments please :)

[Joy Younan]

Hello, I’m a landscape Architecture student at the American University of Beirut. You guys probably know how hard it is sometimes when you start with your site analysis and hit a wall. Well, it’s happened to me! So I was hoping to discuss my project idea with people who will understand what i’m talking about,and maybe get some useful Ideas.

Here it goes.

In our final year project scope, we have to choose a site in Lebanon (our country), with a certain problem that has to be solved. (All the sites in lebanon have complex problematics)

I chose a village called Damour.

Village profile: its only 10 minutes from Beirut (the capital, and where all the main activity and energy is going on in lebanon). And nowadays prices of lands are going up in an unimaginable way, and real estate companies are really speeding up the urban development. (In case somebody doesn’t know, Lebanon is a developing country/third world country).
Before the civil war(1970s), Damour was a main landmark, a very nice old village in the middle of a natural waterfront landscape. It’s composed of many layers: (from west to east) The sea shore, very vast banana fields, the main highway that goes from north to south of Lebanon, the main residential area and the natural forest(there’s also a river).
After the civil war, the villagers (Which are mainly christians), were evacuated from their village by the palestinians. Later on in the late 80’s, they came back, and they were given a certain amount to rebuild their scattered homes. They started building, and stopped because the money was not enough. Of 13000 villagers, only 500 are still living in Damour. So it is suffering from the immigration of the villagers.
Now, if I want to draw a profile of the residential area, I would say that more than half of the buildings are left abandoned, standing unfinished concrete structures.
The village facade is ruined, I would say an URBAN FAILURE, in need of a “facelift strategy”.

My problematic is clear I guess, but I have no idea what my aim is. I can’t just think of the issue as an “Aesthetic” one. There has to be something interesting I could do to use to make use of the lost potential space.

And one more thing, the villagers of Damour are still very sensitive about the issue of letting outsiders into their community. They suffered from it in the past. So the immigrants that own unfinished structures don’t want to sell them for people that do not belong to their village, or their religion.

 

So? Any comments?

PLEASE

Thanks

[ramzi al malti]

you should rather tackle it in a way that stresses the aesthetic part of it but underlying a deeper infrastructure regarding thos unfinished buildings. i.e facelifting it should be your main focus while sending an underlying message or a statement. how to do that? i have no idea. you should develop it further.

[Trace One]

How about a mix of community gardens and  Sculpture gardens that use the ruins to commemorate the past? In the 19 th century the British were big on building artificial ruins in their gardens – perhaps since you have the ruins you can turn what is around them into gardens (vegetables, fruit trees?) owned by the community, but leave the ruins and turn them into art?

Probably completely off, but just a thought!

Beirut was my favorite city in the world in the sixties and seventies, before the wars..

The ruins could be tourist attractions, I know Beirut has a thriving art communty, and maybe bring some money in for the villagers, while the community vegetable gardens sustain them..

? Feel free to LOL, my feeling will not be hurt!

[ramzi al malti]

it’s actually a good approach to the idea but should be dressed in another matter in my opinion.

[ida]

The aesthetic part is very important (it’s what distinguishes us from being another urban planner or horticulturist), but you definitely need some function to make your project stronger. The garden program that was mentioned is interesting. There are many concepts you can do and there really is no wrong concept. Choose one and execute it well. It is not necessary to have a million ideas.

 

What is the identity of your project? If you can answer that question in one sentence then you are off to a good start.

[Author]

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