Can architecture’s efficacy transcend the postcolonial?

In a recent interview with Michel Abboud (the Lebanese-American architect behind SOMA the design firm of Park51, the Muslim community center and worship space in Lower Manhattan), editor Alex Padalka made it direct and explicit to interrogate Abboud about his personal and firm’s history and competency to take on such a large-scale project in the world’s big apple, New York City. I would concur with Padalka’s professional doubts as the 33 years old Abboud and 37 years old Sharif El-Gamal (Park51 developer, Egyptian-American) are not only young but might be inadequately experienced and not ready to handle such project scale at the politico-cultural level. However, I want to suggest an alternative view of what the interview seems to signify.

Image: SOMA, 2010

Padalka’s interviewing discourse questions Abboud’s professional potential and attempts to reveal his cultural background and political stance, which signifies a predominant “Western” preemptive/orientalist attitude towards the East/Islam (even as part of NY’s community). Similarly, Abboud’s self-justification discourse of being an eastern Christian working with Muslims (and maybe Jews!) and promoting cultural dialogue signifies a predominant “Eastern” infatuation/indecisiveness toward the West/Globalization. Both discourses drive around each other in circles.

Image: SOMA, 2010

As portrayed in the interview, the project is some kind of a wealthy, young developer’s vision designed by a young architect lucky to be his friend. The project’s architecture is discussed relative to New York’s glamorous architectural scene (specifically the motif façade) and not relative to the post 9/11 consequences and yet-unresolved tensions. Employing arabesque motifs is another pop reproduction of using formal architectural/heritage aesthetics (like arches, pediments, column capitals, wind towers, etc.) which represents concerns with historicizing identity, asserting political presence, and eventually increasing selling value.

The project, its opposition, and even the interview are actually components of a postmodern, postcolonial cultural struggle and political debate between East and West. If not being “used” as a means to an end, in its very best state Architecture’s efficacy—in this case—is struggling with transcending the postcolonial. But, can it really do so?

Read Alex Padalka’s Interview with Michel Abboud
Read more about this in The New York Times

An Epistemological Utopia

A while ago, I came across Amale Andraos and Dan Wood’s “Cadavre Exquis Lebanese.” Upon a personal appreciation of a surreal approach to experimentation in urbanism and architecture, I find it intriguing how they manage in the instance of recreating the urbanism of Beirut’s Downtown to forge the utopian with the pragmatic.

Image: SOLIDERE

Image: WORKac, 2007

For me, the utopia of “de-neoliberalizing” the downtown against “re-claiming” the public domain and public space and “re-politicizing” a people-oriented space contrasts with the pragmatism of coping with SOLIDERE’s spatial reprogramming. The alternative programs and architecture that they set up occupy the post-war, re-organized space of the urban, practically as per SOLIDERE’s master plan. They even embody a contemporary (post-modern!) cultural sphere of increasing concern with informality (Tent City), heritage (Archeology), ecology (Cedar Evolution), and spectacle (Iconic Programs). All interventions take place in the “emptied spaces” of the downtown, which is a superimposition upon the controversy of “preserved vs. demolished” urban fabric (leaving the so called conservation areas and some buildings intact).

Complementary to the spatial dimension, the proposed alternative privileges cultural production (and consumption) over mere commercial consumption in the downtown. Now that culture prevails, the downtown is still a central city space segregated from the city by the sheer fact of spectacular development. Again, the proposed socio-political alternative contrasts with the pragmatism of coping with SOLIDERE’s (Hariri’s) view of the downtown as “the symbolic national space of reconciliation.” I find this pragmatism to be an intriguing condition in the case of utopia, and the method of “Cadavre Exquis.” While it proposes a sequence of interventions within the existing, post-war spatial conditions (those of SOLIDERE), it departs with the historical condition of Beirut’s historical center (what was the actual city at one point in time) as an urbanity of commerce.

The utopia is epistemological.

Image: WORKac, 2007

Link to WORKac (Amale Andraos & Dan Wood)

‘Un-Filling the Void’

This article was written as a response to the MUPP-MUD City Debates 2007 “Cities after Disaster: Filling the Voids” that took place at the American University of Beirut during 8,9,10, & 12 May 2007.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Americans, specifically New Yorkers, went through an exhaustive and lengthy process “from recovery to renewal” in efforts to continue their daily lives and rebuild their systems’ symbols. With political and bureaucratic complexities in mind, listed here are some dates of major events along the timeline of the recovery and renewal process.

First, the LMDC, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, was formed with nine advisory councils of diverse stakeholders (officials and civil society) on diverse urban issues to contribute to planning the future of Lower Manhattan (with Public Outreach initiatives like neighborhood workshops). A “Tribute in Light” to commemorate 9/11 followed in March 2002. The Master Plan proposal of architect Daniel Libeskind was announced winner in February 2003; then, the refined Master Plan was released in September 2003. Later, the designs of the Freedom Tower and World Trade Center Memorial were unveiled in December 2003 and January 2004, respectively. It was until July 2004 that construction on the World Trade Center Site began.

The result is a process of more than two and a half years of political and bureaucratic debate and work of assessment, conceptualization, competitions, participation, negotiation and decision making before physical reconstruction started.

Image: LMDC, 2006

On the other side of the Globe, another process of reconstruction is now taking place. The ground situation is overwhelming, and one feels pushed by the scale of human and physical tragedies caused by the Israeli military aggression on Lebanon in July and August 2006. However, with Haret Hreik in focus as the core destroyed area of the southern suburb of Beirut, being the security strong hold and urban symbol of Hezbollah, reconstruction does not seem to have enough time and space.

Haret Hreik is witnessing today a number of reconstruction dynamics mainly by two main actors: The Lebanese State and Hezbollah, as the major socio-political actor in the area. Both actors are generating damage assessment studies and distributing money in partial compensation for destroyed apartments, offices, and shops. In addition, the state issued a study report that allows rebuilding almost all buildings as they were (even if they had previously violated the building code) while Hezbollah is preparing for a major reconstruction initiative by creating the “Waad Institution”, to be announced on this 25 May. On the other hand, a volunteer civil-society initiative came from academic and professional planners and architects at the Reconstruction Unit (RU) of the AUB Task Force on Reconstruction and Community Service to contribute to the process and try to respond to its rapidity.

The RU Haret Hreik Team’s work started in September 2006 with a proposal to initiate an international urban design ideas competition for the reconstruction of Haret Hreik (in collaboration with Haret Hreik Municipality); however, the political dynamics worked against this proposal. So, the team moved to another practical alternative and produced in a three-day charrette during January 2007 the only proposal -so far- that deals with spatial reconfiguration of the area, including plans and diagrams of alternatives to the previous situation. The proposal intervenes mainly on introducing more open, public spaces and organizing traffic activities through creating underground parking spaces relative to existing economic centralities.

Today, we are almost close a year’s pass on last July’s aggression. But with conflicting intentions and politics and rapid processes of post-war reconstruction of a politically and culturally divided Lebanese governance and society, what we have got is not just a fast and hasty process of reconstruction but also a lost chance to aspatially and spatially commemorate what happened during the aggression so as to acknowledge it as part of our common historical process that brings us together. In other words, what is currently happening, consciously or unconsciously, is trying to “fill the void.”

Image: Waad, 2009

Last week at the American University of Beirut’s City Debates annual series, an interesting debate took place on post-war reconstruction, its politics, and challenges, especially with the constraint of time and scale of displacement. The debates of this year were entitled “Cities after Disaster: Filling the Void” and introduced, among others, the proposal prepared by the RU Haret Hreik Team. The debate focused on the pragmatism of the proposal versus typical comprehensive planning and on the politics of conceiving the proposal and implementing it or not. However, a very interesting part of that panel was Walid Sadek’s contemplation on the Freudian model of mourning where he presented how mourning a dead person starts after burying the corpse, supposing that the mourners consent to what that dead person meant to them. Accordingly, the living can continue their lives acknowledging -collectively- what they had lost and leaving the void “un-filled” as it now belongs to a gone person.

Although in a different context of politics, culture, and urbanity, comparing the two cases of reconstruction in New York and Beirut shows that the post-911 process case is an interesting case of “un-filling the void” as it used the necessary time within a civil cultural background and political participatory frameworks to recover, commemorate, and conceive what will happen next. On the other hand, the process in Beirut is one where politicians and decision makers want to rebuild and restore previous situations as they were and as quickly as humanly possible, within a divided sectarian/ideological cultural background, and with no inclusive frameworks of major stakeholders and civil society groups.

This way, the corpse stays with us, and we will not have a chance to mourn, in the words of Walid Sadek.

In New York, the voids are left as spatial witnesses to what happened and as civic, public attractors to what holds Americans together. What will happen if we could, somehow, translate our common mourning into spatial voids in Beirut?

Image: 9112609 (slideshare.net)

Link to Lower Manhattan Development Corporation & Waad Rebuild