Jbeil, encountered: “There was an intense debate between those who argued that the war created an opportunity to build a new ‘ideal city” and that it was important to do this to demonstrate that the city had not just survived the bombing campaign, but that it was stronger than ever. There were others, however, who focused on the need to rebuild the city as it was to maintain the history and collective memory of the place.” This concern for history was especially critical for the AUB team because, as al-Harithy explains, “Bint Jbeil has a historic core with Roman traces, a medieval urban fabric, and traditional stone houses.”

Residents too were split on what should be done. Some wanted their houses to be listed as “fully demolished” so they would qualify for full compensation. Others argued for keeping homes in their demolished state as a way to preserve Bint Jbeil’s heritage. Al-Harithy remembers, “We tried to convince people that these houses would have economic value if they were restored and even adaptively reused. We also tried to convince the funding agent, the Qatari government, to fully compensate those with historic houses that were partially destroyed if they agree to restore their homes.” Al-Harithy and her colleagues engaged in long discussions with residents, colleagues, and students about “heritage” as a living concept. Throughout the process, “we operated in an interdisciplinary fashion, where planning, economy, history, development, and architecture intersect,” she says.

Because many of the surviving historic houses tended to be in close proximity to each other, the members of the AUB Reconstruction Unit suggested that some of the three-story apartment buildings that were planned for the neighborhood include underground parking that would be available for those living in the historic houses. They also looked for ways to reorganize traffic patterns and set aside pedestrian areas. They recognized, however, that architectural design solutions could only do so much. It was also critical to revive the economic base of Bint Jbeil and of the other cities and villages that suffered extensive damage last summer and this would take much more than innovative design solutions.

The July 2006 war has given a number of AUB faculty members, students, and alumni opportunities to draw on their architectural skills and experience. Rabih Shibli (MUD ’06) is one of them. He is helping to rebuild some of the 250 houses that were destroyed in his village of El Qlaile last summer. His success in El Qlaile has helped to inspire other architects, colleagues, friends, and a number of AUB students to get involved in reconstruction efforts not just in El Qlaile, but in other villages in south Lebanon as well.

For example, more than 40 AUB engineering and architecture students participated in a one-week Civil Summer Camp in late August 2007 during which they assisted with reconstruction and other community projects in the villages of Tyri, Rcheif, and Zebqine. His success has also made him realize that “what we have done in one village could be replicated in other villages in the south with a minimal amount of funding.” He has since established Beit Bil Jnoub, a non-profit civil organization with a mandate to assist families affected by last summer’s war and to support municipalities and build their capacities to guide and monitor the reconstruction process. The organization also seeks to provide assistance to institutions and individuals to promote local development in devastated villages and towns. Beit Bil Jnoub is currently collaborating with UN-HABITAT to implement a project entitled, Good Governance for Enhanced Post-War Reconstruction: An Integrated Approach to Respond to Shelter Recovery In Southern Lebanon, and is acting as a regional technical office (RTO) in the union of municipalities of Tyre, in charge of providing technical assistance to 1,335 homeowners whose houses were completely destroyed in 10 localities in the Caza of Tyre.

In addition to advising on the reconstruction of individual homes, Shibli is also concerned with the need to find innovative ways to create in these villages public open spaces “that are responsive to local community needs and that can eventually engage other groups and secure further development initiatives.”1 Professor Jala Makhzoumi, who taught a third-year ecological landscape design studio with Rabih Shibli, explained the importance of public spaces in a paper that she and Shibli wrote and that she presented to the Conference on Globalization and Landscape Architecture in Saint Petersburg in June 2007 this way: “Public gathering spaces in El Qlaile, promenades and amenity landscapes, are necessary, not only as places to heal the emotional scars of war, but also as means to reconfirm the village solidarity and its communal identity in the aftermath of war.”2

Designing a Children's Library in a Public Garden
ASSABIL, Friends of Public Libraries, is a Lebanese NGO that has been working since 1997 to support public libraries in Lebanon in part because of the important role that they play as public gathering spaces. This is especially relevant in a country like Lebanon where there are so few places where everyone from all communities and socioeconomic backgrounds is welcome. ASSABIL, which manages Beirut’s only two municipal public libraries in Bachoura and Geitawi, is now involved in a multi-year project with the Municipality of Beirut and the Conseil regional d’Ile de France (CRIF) to establish ten new municipal public libraries in Beirut.

As part of this CRIF-funded study, ASSABIL commissioned George Arbid, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture and Design, to design one of the ten new libraries: a children’s library in the Sanayeh Garden. Arbid decided to assign this project to his design studio class. Working under the close supervision of Arbid and his co-teacher Gregoire Serof, AUB students developed plans for the library. It wasn’t easy. Rola Idriss, who submitted the winning design, describes the challenges: “I was being asked to build in a green space, in a garden. There are so few such places in Beirut, so it was critical to preserve as much of the garden as possible.” After determining that the most suitable location for the library was the northeastern corner of the garden, she designed a building that would run along the edge of the garden fence and would—she hopes—actually enhance the garden.

Designing such a narrow library, however, posed new problems: “I had to make sure to design this very narrow space to meet all the requirements in terms of functionality and comfort.” The proposed garden library offers both indoor and outdoor reading spaces and will be located close to five large eucalyptus trees, which Idriss has cleverly used to provide additional solar protection for the library. Idriss, who is in her fifth and final year at AUB, says she has learned a lot from her professors and from the experience of designing the library in the Sanayeh Garden.

City Debates
One of the forums in which discussions about issues such as public spaces can and do take place is City Debates, organized by AUB’s graduate Urban Planning and Urban Design programs in spring 2003. Professor Mona Harb, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture and Design, who has played a critical role in this annual event from the beginning and has organized three of the five City Debates that have taken place so far, explains that the event is part of as a zero-credit graduate seminar. Because of the interest in urban planning and design issues in Lebanon, however, she and her colleagues decided to also make it also an annual public seminar series.

City Debates, which takes place over several weeks in the spring and attracts participants and audiences from the academic and professional world, is organized around a different theme each year. In 2006 it focused on “Spaces for the Rich: Citizen/Consumer Practices in Affluent Beirut.” During the course of the three-day event in May, AUB students, faculty members, and outside participants discussed the proliferation of spaces that target upper-income groups such as high-end apartment buildings, gated residential compounds, shopping centers, and restaurants and how they are changing the way people use and feel about the city. Harb says that the goal was to encourage “a critical investigation of the impact of high-end development on the spatial practices of urban dwellers—on how they relate to public spaces.” A number of commentators observed that one of the results of the expansion of “spaces for the rich” has been a decrease in spaces that are open to all members of the public. The proceedings of City Debates 2006, which will be published in 2008 in a volume that Harb is editing, will be distributed widely, free of charge.

Some of the Challenges
Al-Harithy, who offered a studio for undergraduate architecture students in fall 2006 on Bint Jbeil, sums it up this way: “Architecture is—or at least it should be—about so much more than designing an attractive structure. We think it is so important to teach our students to use tools of analysis from sociology, economics, architecture, and planning to come up with solutions that address social, economic, and cultural issues.” The opportunity to get hands-on experience as part of an academic course or while volunteering in the community is invaluable for students who are able to see for themselves that architecture can and does have an enormous impact on how people live and how they relate to each other. That is part of what makes architecture such so interesting—and so rewarding.

1 Jala Makhzoumi and Rabih Shibli, “Investing Community Spaces:
   Landscape Design for Post-war Reconstruction in El Qlaile Village,
   South Lebanon,” paper presented at the Conference on Globalization
   and Landscape Architecture, Saint Petersburg, June 1-3, 2007.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.