DESIGN STUDIO VII, LAU DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE, sec 33 & 34

DESIGN STUDIO VII, LAU DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE, sec 33 & 34, FALL 2012

Siraj Asfahani - Medawar 2.0

Medawwar 2.0 is an effort to re-bridge the city coast to the sea.
Light aligns on our sides and glows the huge highway of Charles l Helou. People look like the minimal elements of the space around the high way, in a way not to exist. However, they do. More over there, just down there, exists a land or maybe a country, no one knows what is it exactly. They call it the Lebanese Port. Though I think it is just a port and surely not Lebanese. An intervention which clashes the separation between Marmakhael, the entrance to the middle of Beirut, capital of Lebanon, and the cost line, starts to encounter and wrap around the high way reaching all the way to the last square meter of the port. Along with other programs the project mainly consists of a port tax-free market and a private bus station, which sits next to the gate of a circulating tube, which transports people up and down to the inaccessible sea. 
qualitative diagrams
Speaking of separation, the people in marmakhael are different in literal words, and some of them do not recognize the existence of the 
others. Therefore, a stage, a platform hosts several cultural events that introduce Beirut to itself. In addition, the performance is on water, a natural element that has been deprived from reaching the land. This water is a tunnel which absorbs itself from the Mediterranean sea. All in all, the project is trying to bring the activities that where on the primitive Lebanese port, the same activities that where demolished for the port to grow. The activities were the Medawwar. The activities will never be but a traditional, yet modernized Lebanese Medawwar.
view to the port
mass plan / bird's eye view
ground floor plan

first floor plan
second floor plan
long section
final and study model