DESCRIPTION
Independent Studio at Yale School of Architecture
The project is about the dialectics of Landscape and the agency of architects in framing it.
It touches on a fundamental idea of practicing architecture by unveiling the collective thoughts responsible for the scenery of a place.
DEVICE I
VERTICAL MEASURE
If landscape is a way of seeing, its representation becomes then, by abstraction, a political tool.
This is the mayor of Hadath in his office, proudly framed by his own map of the city. This image is not only fundamental to understanding the politician’s relationship with the landscape, but also realizing that the location (behind his desk), frame, and scale of this map are perhaps the limit of his intended resolution of a site, reduced in essence to its territorial lines…
DEVICE II
MAZAR [CHAPEL]
Our Lady of Harissa, Lebanon
From the political figure to the religious figure and its mythical authority over the city and the landscape.
The second device manipulates the image of the figure inhabiting landscape and specifically an overseeing landscape on behalf of people and communities. Its site of predilection is on a geographical cut in the terrain where Hadath and Baabda are legally and perhaps also mentally separated.
DEVICE III
BUSTAN [GARDEN]
Typical Boustan Garden
The third device is conceptualized through a series of dots. It is a direct outcome of the 1975 civil war in Lebanon, which divided the town between Christians and Muslims
The green line as a political graphic concept is translated literally as a green field, experienced by people, resulting in a piece of land in dispute. Therefore, The natural ground remains empty of architecture, and still 30 years later a challenging ground for spatial and programmatic consideration other than the speculative highway debated in the political realm.
In its traditional form, the boustan is a manmade typology in the landscape, it is a combination of built elements, agriculture, and social programs becoming an essential component of the typology of Hadath.
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