Tag Archive | "beirut"

Rescripting Beirut - Summer Workshop

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Rescripting Beirut - Summer Workshop


15 till 24 August - An International Summer Workshop in Beirut

Archis

Studio Beirut offers its second international workshop for architects, graphic designers, social scientists, urbanists, artists, and related disciplines in the arts and sociology. This workshop, extending over the last two weeks of August 2008 will address the topic “Rescripting Beirut.” In conjunction with the commission Studio Beirut has received to produce an Alternative Guidebook to Beirut, we propose research and design projects to confront the obvious lack of spatial history in the region, to revive and reassess the past, the present and the future as they manifest themselves in the spaces, the narratives and the plans for reconstruction and development that proliferate in the city and nation. Areas of the city that have now been leveled by war and real estate will be re investigated and interventions proposed to revive an awareness of their ongoing history. Wadi Abu Jamil, the old Jewish Quarter, or Northern Saifi, the traditional red-light district a “behind the bank”could be examples, but the city, transformed by conflict and development, abounds with such charged and undocumented zones. Research and active creative proposals will be seen as one synonymous system implemented by the directors and the many instructors along with the primary contribution of the participants in the workshop. Read the full story

Popularity: 16% [?]

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The Landmark, Beirut, by Jean Nouvel


- Via Dezeen

“  Architect Jean Nouvel has restarted work on The Landmark, a large mixed-use development in central Beirut, Lebanon. The project features a 42-storey tower containing a hotel and apartments a horizontal commercial and leisure block with a raised pedestrian street.”

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Popularity: 3% [?]

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Public Space Invaders


- Via Volume - Unbuilt and Think Tank (by Studio Beirut)

“Beirut is an exclusive city. Driving around Solidaire, downtown Beirut, in your airconditioned SUV, gently rolling past the sidewalks, windowshopping from behind your dark-tainted car windows, from behind your expensive sun glasses, you will probably indulge in feeling rather special. Not too many people get the chance of driving around the carefully reconstructed streets of Solidaire, or shopping in its many exclusive boutiques. Then, if you happen to live in the suburbs down south you might feel equally special; Israel’s relentless bombing campaigns on Beirut almost exclusively targeted Haret Hreik, the mostly illegal sprawl of high-rise settlements home to Lebanon’s large Shi’a community. And if you happen to run a kiosk in the middle of Sassine Square, the hilltop crossroads in eastern Beirut, you will again be experiencing exclusivity; especially since the Pierre Gemayel assassination, the area once again is the heartland of the red-crossed Phalangists. Solidaire, Haret Hreik, Sassine; all are very much exclusive places. Exclusive on the basis of class, and identity politics….” Volume-Unbuilt

Watch A sneak preview (courtesy of Studio Beirut Think Tank) of The Public Space Invaders….

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QER6-RQOpx4

Popularity: 10% [?]

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BITS & PIECES

    Architecture Film, The baby falling down the Odessa Steps.
    The scene is well-known: the sequence of the baby falling down the Odessa Steps in Sergei Eisenstein’s movie The Battleship Potyomkin (1925) is one of the most influential films in movie history (many films pay homage to the scene like Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables). [...] Read
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    The Basement Maze of Leavenworth, Kansas
    It was reported last week that an "underground city" had been discovered beneath the streets of Leavenworth, Kansas. [...] Read
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    Buildings That Can Breathe
    A green designer says we need to save energy by making our architecture more efficient. [...] Read
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    OMA / CCTV TV STATION AND HEADQUARTERS
    Building CCTV TV Station and Headquartes Arquitects OMA...[...] Watch
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    Bin Laden brother unveils £100bn plan for world's longest bridge

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    Giant city tower would 'dwarf' the Four Courts
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    306090 call for submissions
    The 13th volume of 306090 investigates the contradictory yet potentially productive tension between our drive to develop and our growing knowledge and emerging concern that such unregulated growth [...] read
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    Cityspeed by Michael Young
    Industrial designer Michael Young has designed Cityspeed, an urban bike for Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer Giant. [...] Read
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    Wright’s Palmer House Put on the Market
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    Can anybody beat Beijing? Is the US ready to compete for the 2016 Olympic Games?
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    Parks department chooses Bike Republic for Yeon-designed waterfront building
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    Dockside Green: The World’s First LEED Platinum Community
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    Chocolate Factory on West Broadway Revealed Unwrapped!
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    Church of God, Inflationist
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    Weighing the two finalists for Yeon-designed former McCall's site
    By the end of this month, the city Parks Bureau will make its recommendation to Commissioner Dan Saltzman on which of two finalists should be selected for redevelopment of the circa-1948 John Yeon-designed Portland Visitors Information Center (more recently McCall's restaurant). [...] Read
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    Developments and Trends — Supporting Dynamic Social Security
    In the light of our current PerfectCity poll it is time to focus on another factor. When we are talking about “Social security” we mean protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others – including public insurances, pensions and child allowances. [...] Read
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BOOKS

The Politics of the Piazza: The History and Meaning of the Italian Square (Design and the Built Environment)

By Eamonn Canniffe

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Town Spaces: Contemporary Interpretations in Traditional Urbanism

By Rob Krier

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Richard Ross: Architecture of Authority

By John MacArthur (Author), Richard Ross (Afterword, Photographer)

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The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War

By Robert Bevan

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A Critic Writes: Selected Essays by Reyner Banham (Centennial Books)

By Reyner Banham

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Regenerating Older Suburbs

By Richard B. Peiser

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The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future

By Randal O'Toole

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Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville

By Witold Rybczynski

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Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities

By Patrick M. Condon

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Built or Unbuilt: Architects Present Their Favorite Projects

By Ursula Schwitalla

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Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years 1954-1959

By Jane King Hession & Debra Pickrel

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Toward an Architecture

By Le Corbusier

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Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Illinois)

By Eric Klinenberg

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Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place

By John R. Logan & Harvey L. Molotch

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The Ecology of Commerce A Declaration of Sustainability

By Paul Hawken

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Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier

By Robert Fishman

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The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History

By Spiro Kostof

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Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land Use

By Jonathan Levine

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Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century

By Peter Hall

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How Much Is Enough?: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth (Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series)

By Alan Durning

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Zaha Hadid

By Gordana Fontana Giusti

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The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl

by Peter Calthorpe & William Fulton

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Planet of Slums

By Mike Davis

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Foster 40: Projects / Themes

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The Production of Space

By Henri Lefebvre

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