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SPEAKER:
Hashim Sarkis
Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design
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ABOUT THE LECTURE:
Through a series of cases in the history of the reconstruction of Beirut (from 1990 to the present), Hashim Sarkis illustrates a number of points and characteristics about Beirut's resilience.
The type of resilience that Beirut exhibits is shaped to a great extent by its disproportionate scale in the economy and politics of the country. It is more "Beirut, Beirut" than "Beirut, Lebanon." Reconstruction is more time consuming than destruction, and by the time we get to the reconstruction of buildings, their place in both memory and in space usually shifts. There is also considerable tension between architecture and infrastructure when it comes to reconstruction, and infrastructure usually wins. The historical burden of preservation overwhelms the first phases of reconstruction and tends to dim innovative design thinking in the later stages. Different approaches (restoration, renovation, rehabilitation) and mechanisms (private, public, collaborative) coexist in a competitive manner. There is a lag effect between the planned and the unplanned aspects of reconstruction, a dynamic that is often stronger than either one. Places hold a strong character that survives destruction, but character is not always expressed in physical form. While the marks on destruction appear strongest in architecture, the expressions of continuity, reconciliation, and resilience are stronger (and more effective) in other media such as novels (e.g. Beirut, Beirut; The Water Ploughman) and films (e.g.: Beirut ya Beirut; West Beirut).
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Hashim Sarkis is a practicing architect in Lebanon, and Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches design studios and courses in the history and theory of architecture and urbanism. His projects include a housing complex in Tyre, schools in North Lebanon and designs for public spaces in Beirut and Tripoli. He was previously a lecturer in the MIT Department of Architecture and a research associate in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Sarkis has also taught design studios at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University, and has been visiting lecturer at the American University of Beirut. He is executive editor of CASE, a publication series of case studies in architecture and urbanism, author of Circa 1958: Lebanon in the Plans and Photographs of Constantinos Doxiadis (Beirut: Dar an-Nahar, 2002); co-editor with Peter G. Rowe of Projecting Beirut (Prestel, 1998); and an occasional contributor to An-Nahar newspaper in Beirut. He received his BArch and BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, his MArch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and his Ph.D. in architecture from Harvard University.
More on Hashim Sarkis
The information on this page was accurate as of the day the video was added to MIT World. This video was added to MIT World on 2002-04-20.
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