Abstract
Before the 1975–1990 Civil War, Beirut’s historic center housed the Arab aswaq: crowded and informal markets that embodied the city’s socio-cultural vitality. Their spatial logic was fluid and dynamic, deeply embedded in Arab socio-cultural traditions. After the war, the private real-estate company Solidere sought to transform downtown Beirut into a global touristic capital. Within this vision, Spanish architect Rafael Moneo was commissioned to design the Beirut Souks, a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional markets. His project sought to evoke the spatial atmosphere of the medieval souk through pedestrian paths aligned with historic street patterns and open-air courtyards exposing Roman ruins. This paper investigates how Moneo’s Beirut Souks negotiated questions of place and identity in the reconstruction of post-war Beirut. It examines whether architectural form can mediate between historical memory and global economic imperatives, and how such mediation affects the experience of urban space. Through interviews with Hayden Salter, the project architect, and Dima Khairallah, a Lebanese architect on the design team, combined with spatial analysis and field observation, the study explores the project’s layered meanings and subsequent transformations. Following the 2019 economic crisis, the closure of most upscale boutiques left the Souks largely empty. The site has since been appropriated through everyday uses such as fitness classes, and through acts of revolt during the 2019–2020 uprisings, which re-inscribed the space with new forms of collective expression. The research thus highlights how architectural form remains an active site where identity, memory, and power are negotiated in the post-conflict city.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Place, Identity, Globalization, Ruins, Post-Conflict Urbanism, Appropriation, Neoliberalism, Beirut
