Beirut the Connector: Rebuilding the City and its Collective Memory Beyond Trauma

Abstract

Beirut’s history of conflicts has left destruction throughout the city leading to voids of disconnection. Understanding these voids of disconnection through the lens of sites of memory that serve as links between past and future become points of investigation. Analysing such sites of memory along the “Green Line”, a void established during the Civil War from 1975 to 1990, these moments may be re-integrated into the public realm by strengthening their program and connection within the city through an addition to the sites of memory that reflects these ideas. The intent is to approach these additions to the sites of memory that engage the broader communities through redefining the “Green Line” as a point around social engagement instead of one of division, integrating existing architectural language to inform familiar spatial qualities within the design, and re-integrating unused materials into the spaces to connect between the past and future.