The Void Left After Disaster Hits the City

City debates panelists

"I am neither an architect nor an urban planner," said anthropologist Barbara Drieskens, which is why she wanted to focus on the human issue in reconstruction, calling it "Urban Trauma" and a fitting title for this spring's session of City Debates, the seminar held annually by the Department of Architecture and Design.

Drieskens, who is a newcomer to the architecture department, wanted to determine if certain features or experiences in different locations-such as the flooding of New Orleans or the ongoing destruction of Baghdad-can be comparable and how they may be linked to those of other cities. What can be shared and how? And what needs to be remembered? Assisting her in the coordination efforts were Mona Harb and Mona Fawaz of the department and Frank Mermier, director of contemporary studies at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient.

According to Drieskens, disasters bring about destruction as well as void, both physical and human, death and displacement, empty liminal spaces of social disruption, and political and economic gaps. Hence the second part of the seminar title, "Filling the Voids," which delineated the subsequent political struggles over the space that was left, rather than just the material aspect of rebuilding. Drieskens noted that this framework oriented the various seminar speakers on how to evaluate the human scale of redevelopment and the negotiations of the different actors in the game of reconstruction.

The seminar also provided a forum for those who were contributing to urban planning after the war. "Since autumn 2006," said Drieskens, "different groups of architects and planners have conducted studies and have been engaged in the field, mediating between the different local, national, and international actors. Their work has been valuable in conceiving, adjusting, and amending the different reconstruction projects, as well as in documenting what happens to draw attention to historical issues and the importance of urban heritage." More importantly, it allowed those individuals to question their own position and engagement in the field, according to Drieskens, rather than just provide a rationalizing discourse.

The City Debates seminar included talks on May 8 by Walid Sadek about whether mourning can be possible "in the presence of the corpse" and by Mona Harb on the politics of reconstruction in postwar Haret Hreik. The next day, the architecture lecture hall hosted Rabi Shibli, who explained the lack of a comprehensive strategy in reconstructing the 10,000 housing units that were demolished in South Lebanon during the war, exacerbated by a Lebanese governmental decree allowing for rebuilding without the approval of the Directorate-General of Urbanism. This negatively affected the relationship between people and their built environment, since the latter did not follow structural guidelines and design standards, as well as the typical architectural features of the villages. Shibli further expanded on the issues brought forth in his talk by tracing a parallel development of this hasty reconstruction in the form of an NGO named "Beit Bil Jnoub" (House in the South), which was made up of architects, urban designers, and planners and activists willing to offer their expertise on sound architectural criteria to the inhabitants free of charge.

Jala Makhzoumi then expounded on the particular case of the southern village of El Qlaile and the landscape design approach to its postwar reconstruction, which offered the potential to address the settlement and rural hinterland, both the cultural and natural. Third-year students also became engaged in a design studio project that proposed sustainable strategies that would protect landscape heritage and recover village identity.

On May 10, Caecilia Pieri of Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales evaluated twentieth-century Baghdad as a palimpsest, a city that is constantly being "rewritten," due to constructions/destructions/reconstructions, as well as floods, wars, rebellions, and invasions. A talk by Habib Debs on Bint Jbeil followed, in which he compared memory and identity concerns with issues of social and economic urgency. In the final day of the lectures (May 12), the case of rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina was analyzed.