Year: 2009
Competition: House of Arts and Culture
Location: Beirut, Lebanon
REPORT
URBAN RELATIONS

The project site, located on the limit of the "old town", has a high value for Beirut. It is part of the border, sensitive and ambiguous place, where two urban areas, so different and distinct, have a dialogue. Since the beginning of our approach to this competition, we focused our attention on the interpretation of the border. Border means limit, cut, scar, discontinuity, but it is also the place where people, cultures, differences meet. The research of a new identity based on this concept might give a deeper meaning to the future.
Through this approach, remaining inside the site limit, we conceived the building to a human scale.
Our purpose was to realize a permeable space, a place for gatherings, meetings, exchange, in other ways a "piazza". It all became clear: consider the limit as a "piazza", a modular space between the two distinct areas and transform it into a place for conceptual debate.
Beyond the symbolic and urban values, it seems correct, for a Mediterranean city, to create an outdoor space for art and culture. A place where socializing is encouraged, a place to share together with the other public spaces of the city.
The top of the building, set as low as possible, becomes a "piazza". The floor design, following an "arabesque" arrangement, as been extended to the front space of the building between Rue Emir Amine and Rue Galghoul, to Jean Nouvel's tower. The extension beyond the plot, which is optional, comes from the need of having an interaction space in proportion the cultural significance of the building.

A building for culture and art can be conceived, to our opinion, following two strategies. One is a case, modular, a neutral frame to fill with exhibitions, shows, concerts. Another way is to consider the building as part of the artistic values that occur inside, giving to the edifice poetic, expressive, communicative and evocative features. The case reflects the content.
We decided, after a harsh debate inside work team, for the second choice. Has prevailed the idea that in the history of a city or during the times of changing and urban transformation, like Beirut is going through, architecture, for its symbolic features, has a predominant role in the construction of a new configuration. A labyrinth drawn on a white stone carpet acts as the metaphor of a urban structure, of a city. A city looking for a new identity, but hard to achieve due to its amount of directions. The ramps created into the surface, were generated by deep scars which meaning mutates from being a division sign to evolve into a strong communication element, the access to the building. Through a discontinuity you reach another dimension, a mental dimension, place of the art. A place symbolically linked to the historical city, a fragment of a bazaar. Dimensions, spaces, pathways have been projected to the man scale, in the attempt to recall the human spatial experience inside an ancient city. Art evokes history and tradition, not trough vernacular processes or oriental settings, but researching its deep meanings with fine allusions. We would like our project to transmit an aware and tragic optimism, an unstereotyped question over human nature, essential task of each culture.
In silent opposition to the part of the project described, there is a linear block were have been distributed all the functions preparatory art: library, workshops, administration. Study and inspiration necessitate intimacy, are personal experiences, they have to be preserved from show blast and hast communication.

The project articulates the House of Arts & Culture into two distinct parts. The design of the "piazza", with its large hexagonal matrix, to be seen from overlooking positions, evokes a labyrinth, a twine of directions. The background is made of white stone while three different darker shades delineate the drawing. A thin oxidized cupper skin wraps all the vertical openings generated by cuts and translations. Light penetrates the perforating metal sheet, acting also as sunscreen, generating the proper environmental comfort. The natural light, for example, dominates the foyer entering from the wide triangular windows between the ramps, reproducing the enchanting effect of light typical of the Arabic-ottoman architectural tradition.
A Cartesian fabric wraps the vertical building. A sunscreen made of metal and vertical ceramic pipes, slightly detached, confer to the façade a natural and vibrating aspect.