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)
