Joseph Abi Radi Abou Jaoudeh / Paul Riachi - What if?

What if we had a government that is capable of meeting the people’s needs? What if we had a government that can motivate its community through projects that can be profitable, helpful and motivating. With the start of our site analysis we figured out the very tiny space owned by the government, and the spaces actually turned into public spaces.  

The citizens of mar mikhael actually use the stairs in their region to organize activities due to the lack of public spaces dedicated to these activities. As a consequence, the program in our project is a communal project with social housings and commercial stores.To add to our analysis, we started studying the relationships that the Lebanese people, in general, and the citizens of Mar Mikhael in specific have with the government. Talking only with economics, we realized that there is a close relationship between governments and the citizens. The project itself will be a work in progress, adding and substracting containers, going high or low rise according to demand.

qualitative diagrams

For example, during growth situations the government sells bonds to the people while in deficit the government just buys them. Another thing is that in growth time, citizens’ tend to enlarge the ground they possess. This is why you might see balconies that are sometimes living room or a terrace. This is why we decided to have a flexible communal space s where people can have different cells or units according to their needs and wants. Having said that, our concept was to create a flexible communal project where the users can have the freedom in changing, reforming, scaling trading their spaces at any time. That’s by having only purchasable 3D space without having typical apartments for sale. By that means, a person can buy a 3D space inside the project in which he fits his cells which he buys directly from the government, and therefore indirectly representing the government bonds. 

A person therefore buys more cells in times of growth but detains from growing in time of deficit. He can also resell his cell just as he does to the government bonds. Moreover, to know what kind of cell or unit our project should deal with, we studied the different supplies and demands of apartment in Beirut and the neighboring areas. We concluded that a regular person in Lebanon would use more than 50% of his income on rent or apartment mortgage. This is why we decided to have an economical unit, which is actually small in area (about 40m2) but actually can incorporate the same functions that a 160m2 apartment can host.

work in progress site view

1st floor plan

3rd floor plan

view from public library bridge

final model