BEIRUT: At a debate on Friday marking the end of a two-week workshop on public space in Lebanon, Ole Bouman, director of the Dutch Architecture Institute, made a list of the various resources that were missing from the workshop: time, money, powerbrokers, acknowledgement, representatives from the public - the list went on.
When he was done, Bouman posed this question: "Given what we lack, are we equipped to do the job that we have set before ourselves?"
The workshop, described as an "investigation into the potential to reinvent public space as a concept and as a physical fact in a city where its current existence is ambiguous," was organized by Studio Beirut, a non-profit association dedicated to public space issues, together with a team of Dutch foundations (Archis, Pearl and Partizan Publik, along with the Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies).
Although Bouman's question may have been a strange way to begin the debate, it was also appropriate. It pointed to the difficulties that are inevitably involved when non-governmental organizations attempt to intervene in the way public space is created. In Lebanon, those difficulties are particularly complex.
"Lebanon," explained one Studio Beirut member, "is a melting pot that never really melted," and in terms of physical space this means that
"even where physical space is nominally public, it has political, religious or otherwise exclusive connotations."
The workshop was the fruit of a collaboration that began last year between the members of Studio Beirut, Archis, Partizan Publik and Pearl. Just months after the summer 2006 war with Israel, members of the Dutch contingent contacted Studio Beirut about their plans to visit Lebanon to research the aftermath of the conflict. What they found in Lebanon was a place where years of war and social fragmentation had resulted in spaces that encourage divisions.
The immediate results of that visit were published in an issue of the magazine Volume dedicated to cities "unbuilt" by war and, afterward, the non-profits agreed to continue to work together on projects addressing both the structural lack of public space as well as the absence of dialogue about the issue. Read more
When he was done, Bouman posed this question: "Given what we lack, are we equipped to do the job that we have set before ourselves?"
The workshop, described as an "investigation into the potential to reinvent public space as a concept and as a physical fact in a city where its current existence is ambiguous," was organized by Studio Beirut, a non-profit association dedicated to public space issues, together with a team of Dutch foundations (Archis, Pearl and Partizan Publik, along with the Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies).
Although Bouman's question may have been a strange way to begin the debate, it was also appropriate. It pointed to the difficulties that are inevitably involved when non-governmental organizations attempt to intervene in the way public space is created. In Lebanon, those difficulties are particularly complex.
"Lebanon," explained one Studio Beirut member, "is a melting pot that never really melted," and in terms of physical space this means that
"even where physical space is nominally public, it has political, religious or otherwise exclusive connotations."
The workshop was the fruit of a collaboration that began last year between the members of Studio Beirut, Archis, Partizan Publik and Pearl. Just months after the summer 2006 war with Israel, members of the Dutch contingent contacted Studio Beirut about their plans to visit Lebanon to research the aftermath of the conflict. What they found in Lebanon was a place where years of war and social fragmentation had resulted in spaces that encourage divisions.
The immediate results of that visit were published in an issue of the magazine Volume dedicated to cities "unbuilt" by war and, afterward, the non-profits agreed to continue to work together on projects addressing both the structural lack of public space as well as the absence of dialogue about the issue. Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment