The River 12 Mapping Beirut Through Its November 2015 Joanne Nucho Tenants’ Stories Public Works Studio

2 Bringing Beirut River 8 Beirut theatre slides into an back to life island of trash theOtherDada Jessica Leopauldine Khazrik

4 From Vartavar to concrete to 10 The Beirut River crocodile environmental disaster frenzy Alia Fattouh Nadia Christidi

5 The river 12 Mapping Beirut through its November 2015 Joanne Nucho tenants’ stories Public Works studio

6 Transect of erosion 15 Vartan Avakian’s ghost river Sarah Lily Yassine Rayya Badran

Omar Fakhoury, site specific intervention for TandemWorks | Date : 20 September 2015, removed by anonymous on 21 september | Banner, 3 x 24 m Translation to English: "I regret I won't be eating garbage and drinking sewage this season, for travel purpose" - The Sea.

Editorial note Mayssa Fattouh

It appears that most of the world's major cities were built flux of migration, and was preparing for a long civil war that on or around areas of freshwater. Our ancestors chose to settle would shape it into what we know today. there since rivers are a source of food, a means of providing With profoundly rooted divisions amongst its citizens, drinking water for families, herds and crop irrigation, and Beirut has become impregnated by fissures as wide as Nahr they delimit cities. In antiquity, when the Romans had built Beirut, and as opaque as its walls. The intervention Hammoud an aqueduct crossing the river, Nahr Beirut was as a source of Badawi comes at a time when civil society, with the help of freshwater that filled the Roman Baths located in the current private and individual initiatives, is filling in the gap of state city center of Beirut.The river continued to do so until the inefficiency in order to find immediate, viable solutions for ‘industrial age’ when, for reasons of convenience and due deep malfunctions. to its proximity to the city’s port, an erratic industrial zone It is not so much a gesture of hope or a promise of change developed along the riverbed drastically transforming the that informs Hammoud Badawi. It is, rather, to produce landscape as well as the use of the river. dialogue and access memory, imagination and collaboration. The Nahr Beirut we now know is a concrete canal flanked In this inaugural project and publication developed by by high walls that block visual access to the river as well as to TandemWorks (TW) – an initiative that aims to raise cultural and social signifiers practiced by communities and awareness on social, cultural and environmental issues with neighboring residents. By the time the decision was taken to arts interventions in the public realm– Hammoud Badawi has erect the high walls as a security measure against recurrent commissioned contributions from various disciplines to think floods, the country was well on its way to radical change. about the relationship of the city and its inhabitants to Nahr Lebanon had already lived a political crisis in 1958, experienced Beirut. ...continue reading on page 13.

1 Bringing Beirut river back to life About the author Rivers and streams are dynamic systems, its running waters, resulting in the loss of the which in their natural state continually beneficial ecosystem services. The river no modify their form. They are considered longer provides clean water, a space for flood living organisms; they breathe life into the retention, habitat for biodiversity, and most lands and the communities surrounding importantly it prevented cultural amenity them. They are important biodiversity areas, and social activities. where a diverse network of species thrives, theOtherDada is initiating a strategy to such as water birds, fish, amphibians and rehabilitate Beirut River through methods other water dependent organisms as well as inspired from biomimicry: design inspired humans. Rivers are also important freshwater by nature. The aim is to study the function suppliers as they bring clean, potable water of a healthy riparian ecosystem and recreate for drinking and irrigating agricultural lands. these services though the proposed solutions. They play an important role in the water cycle The rehabilitation of the river integrates as they carry water and nutrients, and offer nature in the degraded urban environments plenty of water retention areas that mitigate to improve the surrounding neighbourhoods’ flood events. They also provide recreational living conditions. spaces for social activities that bring people together. Let’s bring Beirut River back to life! Historically, the Beirut River has played an important role in providing ecological and social values. It belongs to a large, natural network where a succession of rich and vital Case study diagram: fluvial ecosystems slowly merges into one another from mountain to valley; ecosystem, To understand the current state of the here, referring to a community of living Beirut River in comparison to other rivers, organisms and non-living components such theOtherDada developed a Comparative as air, water, soil and mineral. Table measuring the environmental In the natural section upstream, the performance and ecosystem services of the watershed incorporates a functional rivers from Worse Case Category to Natural ecosystem that provides benefits called River Category (for more information, the “ecosystem services”. These include a number categories are explained further below). of points: Several case studies were examined showing Provisioning Services: Provide freshwater how restorative interventions transformed in the area of Daychounieh for irrigation and rivers from Artificial to Natural stream potable water to the city through the roman waterways. aqueducts. Transport sediments, organisms In comparison to regional and and nutrients. international case studies, some rivers were Regulating Services: Treat, store water, as in a worse state than the Beirut River. The well as control erosion to mitigate the impact Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul, which was of floods and storms, and filter waste through once buried and covered by a freeway and natural processes. concrete deck, was transformed into Supporting Services: Offer food, shelter, a recreational linear park even though the and water to living organisms. The River concrete walls were still delineating it. acts as a vital migratory path for more than Another example is Wadi Hanifa Project theOtherDada 70,000 soaring birds. where the sewage and waste water in Riyadh Cultural Services: Provide a space for ran through the city posing a health risk to Active since 2010, the architecture lab recreation and cultural activities for local the community and is now treated by natural theOtherDada defends communities such as, the renowned means [phytoremediation with plants] an alternative position Armenian Water festival Vardavar, in which providing a continuous ribbon of naturalised towards the current Armenians traditionally gathered around the parkland that interconnects the city, the practice of sustainability through context and river and drenched themselves in water. people and the Wadi. medium, invoking new Currently, the system is broken. relationships between The human interventions interrupt the climate, landscape, and inhabitants. Informed by natural flow of water from the mountains to biomimicry, they connect the Mediterranean Sea. Once it reaches the natural ecosystems of urban section the river no longer performs as sites to understand and consequently devise new a healthy water body with its usual, natural potential living habitats. functions. The polluted water caused by theOtherDada works raw sewage dumping, the concrete channel within a collaborative process between architects, and the construction of the Daychounieh scientists, botanists, dam drastically altered its physical habitat artists, economists and the structure, and the ecological functioning of craftsmen.

2 Case studies Taking successful case studies showing River rehabilitation from artificialRIVER REHABILITATION to natural how interventions transformed rivers from CASE STUDIES FROM ARTIFICIAL TO NATURAL artificial to natural stream waterways

WORST CASE ARTIFICIAL SEMI-ARTIFICIAL IN BETWEEN URBANIZED NATURAL POLLUTED NOISE CHANNELIZED WATER CLEAN / BIODIVERSITY INCREASE GREEN SURFACES NATURAL NATURAL SERVICES COVER RIVER BODY POLLUTED FLOOD-PROTECTION ENHANCE PUBLIC SPACE PHYTOREMEDIATION ATTEMPT TO RETURN WITH HIGHWAY COVER RIVER STORM-WATER MANAGEMENT BIODIVERSITY HABITAT TO NATURAL STATE BEIRUT RIVER / BEIRUT RIVER tOD PROPOSAL

CHEONGGYECHEON CHEONGGYECHEON STREAM STREAM (2005)

Beirut, Lebanon Today Beirut, Lebanon Future MoEW & tOD

• Undergrounded1955 KANDA RIVER South Korea, Seoul KANDA RIVER (2010) • Covered« with a freeway SeoAhn Total Lansdcape Office & concrete deck 1971 • Project area: 5.84 km WADI HANIFA (2007)

WADI HANIFA

• High level of water pollution Tokyo, Japan • Concrete walls delineating the river • Results: development of an Urban Forest Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Moriyama & Teshima • High level of water pollution Planners & Buro Happold • River covered Design Office • Water waste dump • Awards: Aga Khan Award ELWHA RIVER (2011) for Architecture ELWHA RIVER

Washington, USA • Important for the development • Largest dam-removal of the Olympic Peninsula • Restore Salmon Runs • Provide electricity for a paper mill • Restore the river ecosystem

Taking successful case studies showing how interventions transformed rivers from artificial to natural steam waterways

References

1 Biomimicry Institute. 2015. “What is biodiversity in Indo-Burma, David Accessed September 08 2015. http:// Synthesis. World Resources Institute, Biomimicry.” Accessed September 08 Allen, Kevin Smith and Will Darwall, sciencelearn.org.nz/Contexts/ Washington, DC. 2015. http://biomimicry.org/what-is- 1-28. IUCN Cambridge, UK and Gland, Toku-Awa-Koiora/Science-Ideas-and- Serhal, Assad, and Khatib, Bassima, biomimicry/ Switzerland. Concepts/River-ecosystems editors. 2014. State of Lebanon’s Birds 2 Börkey, Peter et al. 2005. “Freshwater 5 Ellis, Erle. 2014. “Ecosystem”. The Mcneal, Marguerite. 2015. “Janine and IBASs. Dar Bilal for Printing and Ecosystem Services.” In Ecosystems Encyclopedia of Earth, Accessed Benyus: Inventing the Eco-Industrial Publishing. and Human Well-Being: Policy September 08 2015. http://www. Age.” Wired Blog, July 09. http:// 10 Sponseller, Ryan; Heffernan, James Responses, Millennium Ecosystem eoearth.org/view/article/152248 www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/07/ and Fisher, Stuart. 2013. “On the Assessment Series, 213-255. Island Feld, Christian. 2013. “What rivers janine-benyus-inventing-eco- multiple ecological roles of water in Press. do for us?” Fresh Water Blog, industrial-age/ river networks.” Ecosphere 4(2):17. 3 Bourj Hammoud Community Accessed September 08 2015. http:// 8 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The Economics of Ecosystems by Interview TandemWorks and freshwaterblog.net/2013/07/30/what- 2003. “Ecosystems and Their Services.” & Biodiversity. 2015. “Ecosystem theOtherdada. Focus Group Meeting, rivers-do-for-us/ In Ecosystems and Human Well- Services.” Accessed September 08 Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon, June 23 6 Frem, Sandra. 2009. “Nahr being: A Framework for Assessment, 2015. http://www.teebweb.org/ 2015 Beirut : Projections on an Alcamo Joseph, and Bennett Elena, resources/ecosystem-services/ 4 Dudgeon, David. 2012. “Threats Infrastructurel Landscape”. Msc Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, UCSB. 2015. “What characteristics of to freshwater biodiversity Thesis., Massachusetts Institute of 49-70. Island Press. living things does a river have? Is a globally and in the Indo-Burma Technology. 9 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. river alive?” UCSB Science, Accessed Biodiversity Hotspot.” In The status 7 Koiora, Toku. 2014. “River 2005. Ecosystems and Human September 08 2015. http://scienceline. and distribution of freshwater ecosystems” Science Learning, Well-Being: Wetlands and Water ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1328

3 From Vartavar to concrete to environmental disaster

« The current global emphasis on infrastructural rehabilitation has introduced infrastructure as a major field which urban designers need to engage and re-envision. In Lebanon, basic infrastructures like channels and roads take the priority in funding and execution in front of affinities like public space, yet these infrastructures are never conceived beyond their technical dimension. That is the case of Beirut’s river (Nahr Beirut); one of many rivers on the Lebanese coast which was channeled as a flood mitigation measure, gradually becoming an open-air sewer and an isolated urban island in Beirut. » — Sandra Frem About the author TandemWorks’ project, Hammoud Badawi, was a braided waterway where people would stems from an invitation by theOtherDada gather and celebrate a festival called Vartavar (tOD) Integrated Architecture Lab, who have on July 18th of each year, and which dates initiated a strategy to rehabilitate Beirut back to Armenian pagan customs. Memories river, create biodiverse public parks and a of a playful, recreational time in a clean river pedestrian bridge alongside the existing filled with frogs, fish and green surroundings Yerevan Bridge, and thus connect Bourj still prevailed among an older generation of Hammoud to Achrafieh and Badawi. Perceived residents. The river was an emblem of nature as underdeveloped and critical areas on the that had a direct impact on people’s lives on an margins of Beirut, these neighbourhoods have economic and social level. Others remembered a complex, rich history and a dense social that the area around the river represented fabric that have been adversely impacted by a border during the civil war, and recalled the implementation of the river walls. the river flooding in 2005. It is indeed due to Part of TW’s mission is building several floods that the decision to canalise the communities and projects around critical river was issued in 1956, yet it was not until urban issues, and providing platforms for 1972 that it was concretised. reflection on future possibilities and initiatives. A common sentiment among the residents In this context, Hammoud Badawi developed of Bourj Hammoud and Badawi was that the a community-building initiative through walls protruding into the landscape of the focus-group meetings with participants from neighbourhood should be removed. Walls are Bourj Hammoud, Nabaa, Badawi, and to a confining and oppressive, creating a sense lesser extent the area of Sin el-Fil. The aim of enclosure within the neighbourhoods was to assess the respective neighbourhoods’ themselves. For all these reasons, a commonly relationship to the river, its significance, and voiced suggestion was to try and bring the the role it plays in their lives. Those who river back to its natural state, where the water partook in the meetings included the public flow is regenerated and the urban landscape is and private sectors, press, civil society, as adapted to human life in the city (public space, well as urban planners, students, academics, green areas, safe crossings, etc.). researchers, members of different political Recent attempts at changing the current parties, minority groups, residents of the area situation include a campaign initiated to clean and were invited based on their experience in up the river from trash and animal residue, relation to the river as well as their proximity and an urbanism project initiated with the to it. municipality of Bourj Hammoud aimed at The overriding sentiment towards the creating a link between both sides of the river situation of the Beirut River was negative, and through a hovering garden. Unfortunately, the participants were in agreement that the none of these projects has seen the light of day. current situation was deplorable. The river The summer of 2015 saw a drastic worsening of currently represents a dry concrete channel the river’s state, an environmental disaster (or that separates neighbourhoods, and has ‘trash crisis’) across Lebanon, and irreversible become a smelly, dysfunctional dumpster. damage to our natural environment and Alia Fattouh They believed that not only was the river everyday life. and its environs abused, but also that its is Co-Founder and Director of TandemWorks. She function as a natural resource – as well as previously served as the name ‘Beirut River’ (since it is no longer Director at Lombard Freid a natural river, but a water channel) – has Gallery in New York and Education Manager at become obsolete. In fact, one of the interesting Canvas magazine, Dubai. findings revealed that residents from different Alia holds a BA from the generations didn’t know that the channel was American University in Beirut in Political Studies a river, and was instead perceived as an open and a Masters degree sewer. from Science Po Paris in On the other hand, some participants Conflict Resolution and Development. recounted stories from a time when the river

4 The river About the author When I asked a friend, a Lebanese woman the beach!]. Given the ambivalence of many in her mid-30s who grew up on the Beirut of the people I spoke with about the river, and side of the river what she thought of the given the fact that they seemed to have little waterway, she answered with a shrug: “It nostalgia for it, it seems that an appeal to a was never a river. It was a concrete block romanticized past when the river was pristine that overflowed with sewage.” Her answer might not be enough to change matters. It is echoed in interviews and conversations I had not about a return to a past golden age, but a with nearly every person her age. My own willingness to think about how the river and experience of the Beirut River was informed more importantly its surrounding areas, might not only by my experience of its pungent odor, contain possibilities for new interactions and reaching its zenith in the dry summer months new uses of space that do not simply yield when abundant rain could not dilute its more public areas to parking lots and malls. mysterious contents, but it was also colored by Perhaps we can still find something beneath my experience of another concrete river that the pavements. divided a city halfway across the world where Perhaps the way to do this would be to I grew up: the Los Angeles River. For decades think how people would best like to use the just a “concrete wash” to most Angelenos, spaces around them; to allow people to co- recent years saw a revival of interest and in imagine the future of their cities. Doing this some case genuine surprise at the fact that this would necessarily involve invoking memories is a natural river not some kind of manmade of how things used to be, but also, and more flood control. This disconnect between the importantly, a creative approach to thinking movement of water is forged not only by the about how they could be. Paying attention to high walls of the concrete corridor, but also by neglected spaces like the Beirut River could the inaccessibility to an experience of a river help reorient questions about the future that is clean enough to swim in, to fish in, or to of the city, the state of the present, and the touch. possibilities for actual change. Gazing at photographs of the Beirut River and the areas to east of it before the 1930s and 40s, it is impossible to reconcile that image of agricultural fields and wide, flowing waters with what would later become the densely populated and urbanized municipality of Bourj Hammoud. Still, I was surprised to find little nostalgia in most of my interviews, even among those with people who were born a generation or two before my friend, who only thinks of the river as a concrete sewage block. Distant memories of powerful floods that would occur during heavy rains shaped the memory of one of my interviewees, as she recalled fantastic stories of cars being pulled into the water. In another interview with a woman in her 60s who had lived in Bourj Hammoud for most of her life, she recalled hearing that the river water used to rise and flood homes in the days before the concrete walls and improved drainage protected houses from this particular danger. The river, for many of this generation, was a source of unpredictability and fear; an untrustworthy opponent to urban development. Joanne Randa Still, embedded in the stories of a woman Nucho who used to catch frogs in the swampy land near her elementary school on the Bourj is an anthropologist and Hammoud side of the river in the early 1980s, I filmmaker who earned her caught glimpses of another experience of this PhD at the University of California, Irvine in 2013. river and the muddy banks that used to line She is currently director its apparently ever-shifting shores. “Now that of graduate studies and spot is a parking lot,” this woman recounted. clinical assistant professor at the Hagop Kevorkian I cannot help but think of the graffiti on the Center for Near Eastern walls of Paris during the uprisings of 1969: Studies at New York Sous les Pavés, la Plage ! [Under the pavement, University.

5 Transect of erosion About the author Rivers transport human and natural deposits. Yet, Beirut witnessed numerous They filter water, carve pathways from transitions during the second half of the 19th uplands to lowlands, creating confluences, century. The character of the riverfront zone storing surface water, and forming watersheds was forged by the formation of an Eastern that shape subterranean layers of cities. industrial ensemble to the East of ‘Bayrouth Historically, urban centres emerged in the al Qadimat’ (walled Beirut)5. The quarantine vicinity of estuaries or coastal plains, fertile in built in 1834, adjacent to the port docks, soil, allowing agricultural and marine trade shaped the character of the area6. to prosper. Key spatial and visual features, Beirut was declared an Ottoman provincial open water bodies fashion the urban tissue capital in 1888, and in 1890, the port was and identity of neighbourhoods, they stich enlarged (Companie du Port, des Quais et the hinterland to city and carry narratives and des Entrepôts de Beyrouth) garnering the sediments across the banks. They are not static, city importance in the region as a Levantine but change with the seasons, mirroring climatic commercial port 5,6,2. conditions. In addition, the onset of railway Since 1956, the Nahr area has delineated transportation in 1895 connecting Beirut the administrative Eastern border of Beirut to Damascus added another layer to the and has shaped its urban mobility and traffic changing urban landscape. The industrial patterns. Prior to canalization, traversing the character prompted by the port and the Beirut River [Nahr Beirut] by foot was once a quarantine was further emphasized by the social activity for residents of Mar Mikhael, construction of railway stations near the port Geitaoui, Bourj Hammoud and others in in the areas of Mar Mikhael, and later in Furn proximity to the river. Catching frogs and al Chebbak, extending the industrial character counting them, interacting with the flow of of the area East towards the riverbanks. water, and recording cyclical changes from The geography of the city shifted even wetter to drier seasons; these and other further with the waves of migrant rural recollections come from a time when the river inhabitants seeking employment in the urban was a flourishing ecosystem and a celebrated centre7, 8, 9. This contributed to an increase civic space 1. in the city’s population from 10,000 in 1840 Perceived as edge, barrier, open sewer to 80,000 in 1880 [8,9]. With the continuous and municipal waste disposal pit, today the arrival of new minorities to the Nahr area, the river endures in collective consciousness. port area sprawled to encompass the national Pedestrians and motor vehicle drivers loathe slaughterhouse [al-Maslakh], small-scale the Nahr area as it resonates with traffic steel, metal, and wood industries, as well as congestion, but also testifies to the general shipping services in the waterfront zone of degradation of the environmental quality of theriver 10. Beirut. During the French mandate, rapid The deterioration of the river’s ecological urbanisation further changed the river’s condition is synonymous with neglect and ecosystem. A short-lived concrete division abuse of an urban common. Its present dam was built in 1934 at Daychounieh in an condition is the result of layers of human attempt to modernise urban infrastructure agency to redirect, store, and limit its natural and to irrigate adjacent, arable lands 2. Rapid flow over time. Restoring the river’s ecological urbanisation kept seeping eastward towards and civic functions should constitute the the Nahr area, and encroachment on the next phase of intervention, and reflect river’s flood zone triggered a major flood in contemporary discourse on the visible and 1942. invisible role of water and wilderness in dense Later in 1968, canalizing the Beirut River urban centres. – a modernist approach to mitigating flood One of the earliest recorded interventions threats – was a translation of the socio- in the Beirut River area dates to around 50 political approach in urban infrastructural BC when the Romans diverted water via the reforms that Beirut witnessed during the Zubayda aqueduct to supply Roman Beirut 1960’s. In a sense, urbanisation over the with potable water. This system carried water flood plain had cast a reality that could only Sarah Lily Yassine to the city until early Ottoman times, after be mitigated at the time by such invasive which it was mostly used to irrigate peri-urban urban planning policies and operations is an urban planner who agricultural land, gardens and orchards on its illustrated by drastic canalizing of the river, has practiced in Beirut 2 and in London. She is banks . Until the mid 19th century, the Eastern heavily disrupting its water flow, its social interested in exploring the plain of Beirut was abundant thriving with function and wetland species that had until role of urban wilderness in orchards of mulberry, fig, carob, banana, citrus then flourished. Coupled with lax land use reconfiguring the nexus of 3, 4 city and nature. She writes trees, and vegetable gardens . The river also regulations, and the constant arrival of about the meaning of served domestic functions such as bathing, refugee communities to the Port and the Nahr place, landscape narratives laundry, cooking, and fishing2 . area, the canalisation process transformed and oral history.

6 the river into a cavity and remnant of what it altered throughout history to fit human once had been. While the river is now eroded, needs for potable water and irrigation, as well its memory is still captured by those whose as a fear of natural processes. It is, therefore, recollections take them back to a time when indicative of the process of human agency on playing around the river area was a lived the landscape. reality 1, 11. Beirut’s estuary – where the Beirut River Despite its degraded condition, the river flows into the Mediterranean – is absent watershed remains an important habitat from the visual landscape. It is clogged with for migratory birds. During the fall and industrial pollutants and bares significant spring seasons, flocks of migrating birds fly traces of the civil war, as it situated in the over the Beirut river valley, since Lebanon vicinity of the quarantine area. Reconciling lies on an important migratory flyway. It is the intersection of river and its coastal plain therefore plausible to reimagine corridors should constitute the beginning of a process of wilderness, injecting pockets of freedom of restoring the river landscape by combining and repose from the urban cacophony, and functional water management systems that creating alternative viewsheds and moments create a semblance of unscripted wilderness of urban rest along its banks. places to be experienced and celebrated by The story of Nahr Beirut clearly reflects city dwellers, but also by bird, insect and other the manner in which the river has been non-human communities. HOW DID IT ALL START? THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF BEIRUT RIVER theOtherDada reacts to How did it all start? The historical development of Beirut River theOtherDada

50 B.C. 1933 1934 1948 1956 1968 1990-2000 2000 2013 2015 Qanater Zbaydeh aqueduct built during the Roman Empire Corniche El Nahr National coastal highway artery Urbanization on the river Daychounieh dam under the French Mandate Dora bridge completed Construction of a boulevard linking the bridge to the port Decree of sanitizing Nahr Beirut Construction of river walls / part 1 Construction of river walls / part 2 Construction of Sukomi waste treatment BRSS Project ( Beirut River 2.0 Beirut River Solar Snake)

References

1 Arpi Mangassarian (architect) in au milieu du XIXe siècle: naissance University of Beirut, 2014. pratiques de discussion with the author, July 2015 d’un centre”, in Arnaud J-L, Beyrouth, 7 Jala Makhzoumi, and Reem Zako. l’espace (p 35-49). Presses de l’Ifpo: 2 Lamia Joreige, “Under-Writing Grand Beyrouth.Presses de l’Ifpo: “The Beirut dozen: Traditional do- Beirut, (year?). Retrieved from Beirut,’’ Kamel Lazaar Foundation Cul- Beirut, 1996. Retrieved from mestic garden as spatial and cultural http://books.openedition.org/ tural Initiatives in North Africa and http://books.openedition.org/ mediator.” Proceedings of the 6th In- ifpo/3232 the Middle East, http://www.kamella- ifpo/3219 ternational Space Syntax Symposium 10 Robert Saliba. Beirut 1920-1940: zaarfoundation.org/initiatives/4/34/ 5 AFAC-LIBAN: Section Libanaise de Istanbul, 2007. Domestic Architecture Between (last accessed August 5, 2015). l’Association Française des Amis des 8 Christine Babikian. “Developement Tradition and Modernity. The Order 3 May Davie, ‘’Bayrout al qadîmat: Chemins de fer. du Port de Beyrouth et Hinterland,” of Engineers and Architects: Beirut une ville Arabe et sa Banlieue a la fin (2008). Retrieved from http://www. in Arnaud J-L, Beyrouth, Grand 2006. du XVIIeme siècle,’’ National museum afacliban.org/AFAC-LIBAN/Accueil. Beyrouth, 25-34. Presses de Presses de 11 Sandra Frem. Nahr Beirut: Projec- news, No. 3 (Fall 1996), http://al- html l’Ifpo: Beirut, 1996. Retrieved from tions on an Infrastructural Landscape. mashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/900/902/ 6 Yara Falakha. “Cultural catalyst: ac- http://books.openedition.org/ Massachusetts Institute of Technolo- MAY-Davie/Bayrout-al-Qadimat.html tivating open spaces in the Medawar ifpo/3232 gy, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 2009). (November, 20, 2014). area.” 9 Carla Eddé. Beyrouth, le Mont- 12 Nubar Mangassarian in discussion 4 Jihane Sfeir-Khayat. “Beyrouth Final Year Project, American Liban et ses environs au xixe siècle: with the author, July 2015

7 Beirut's theatre slides into an island of trash About the author The Lebanese Ministry of Planning issued a It looked like an inverted tunnel. Our new decree to canalize the Beirut River in 1956. concrete theatre will emulate the roads of the The same year, the Lebanese state drew the city, ensconcing its svelte buildings, kissing borders of administrative Beirut limiting its cars, and trade wind trucks. Adjacent to the northern line to the River bank. Consequently, Beirut Pitch, a second stage will be built once the edge of the Western Theatre Bank the urban overground is concealed. Highways became Beirut’s border separating it from emulate horizons. Break the beat, cover the the municipalities of Furn el Chebbak sun but don’t speak of victory. The new and Baabda, while the edge of the Eastern theatre matches the old in depth. It looks like Bank verged on the municipalities of Burj an inverted tunnel – a heckling architecture Hammoud, Sin el Fil and Mansourieh. The of screams and held gasps. theatre drifted down from the mountains to But when garbage wasn’t buried in the suburbs to the city. Then the sea became Lebanon, and when waste resurged, we an open-air sewer and receptacle of trash too came up with a new plan. Our drilling formed by an environmental squelch and intervention was no longer necessary in a exiled citizenry. Spill the air. Spell it. Lair. time of reeking spectacles. Toxicity blares in legislation. We often wonder why we scream The sun hasn’t shut down yet; we wait. whenever we pass through a tunnel. We We look stern at the walls facing us; they probably scream to assert the limits of our peck a little; we stay in place. Another drop of speech among other physical boundaries. sweat slowly forms on the right slants of our We often wonder why we hold our breath noses. It plods towards our cheeks, drips off whenever we pass through a tunnel. Perhaps our faces and falls on our shirts. We glare at because we think we are underneath a sea. sweat. We are certain that it will dissipate in Perhaps the phenomenon of not-flattening less than a minute. As we get up to close the the earth still startles us so we let out a long curtains, we look back to stand, gunk becomes scream out of fear, or hold a breath for so metonym of flesh, our hands and shoulders long out of shock. The pronoun old refers to stick together. With our left arms, we try to the Housing Committee for the Preservation dissever them from each other, they too glue, of the Underground. In the underground, I sticky muck, solar muffs. Our legs are set remember that I am an animal taking refuge. ablaze. Heat whiffs of collectivity. Abolish language! Methane and Bioxide hurl out of our Garbage demos on the streets for a while flesh, what a ghastly odour they have! We in winter... From sewage to home, and from pass outass oute! We pass outr legs are set underground to home, muck trips. Muck ablaze. Heat whiffs of collectivity. We dream brings along putrid water. The Beirut Pitch of leaving. We are thirsty. We see what Keess1 snaps, the River hurls: “These walls cannot from afar. We enclose him with a dance, but contain me!” we don’t know why we are dancing. Abou In their work on islands and emerging He repeats his dance extraterritorial spaces, curator and سلوْلي لوْلي Keess dances and multiplies until he becomes an army of writer Anselm Franke and theorist and Abu Keesses. The army continues to move architect Eyal Weizman contend that the laggingly, they look like models in French modern political project is built on two Jessika perfume ads. We wake up. A light wind blows. complementary actions. The first action rests Leopauldine We go. We try to orient ourselves, and head on domesticating the disciplinary ‘culturally towards the edge of the stream. Down the hygienic’ politics of the state’s interior, and Khazrik and the drain, we wonder, “Am I in the first slot, or in the second, on exclusion of an ‘outside’ by Society of False the last?” the constant redrawing of borders and the Witnesses We look at this place; it seduces us. normalization of the violence of delineation. Something is luring us to stay here in the In Arabic, the noun for ‘wastes’, nifayat, is Jessika Leopauldine Khazrik is an artist and underearth. derived from the verb ‘to exile’, nafa. Herein, linguist born in Beirut/ The sun hasn’t shut down yet; we wait for language and the Lebanese history of waste Baghdad in 1991 and it. Our bodies leak during this time of year. and exclusion attest to a modern state that currently based in Boston. She often works under the We reek of garbage. We wait longer. We don’t denies by way of both accumulation and the alias of The Society of False wait. These hallowing walls are unbearable. sustenance of economies of exile. Through Witnesses (2014 - present) Winter is freaky. We have piled the city occupation of the public space that is the river that studies and plays with the geophilosophy, with our remains, mired by the state and and turning it into a dump and border, the political economy and threatened by rain currency. Spill the air, spell Lebanese state does not only exile the space spectatorship of wastes. it, blare. of the refugee from the city but also that of She is currently pursuing a We thought we could dig a trench; a the underground. Masters of Science in Art, Culture and Technology podium and an exhibition hall built out of What we also witness today is an (ACT) at MIT. slimy asphalt, artificial tar, and small stone. accumulation of absence within the river

8 stream. Expunging the traces of modern scientists decided to create SEDRA to oppose archeology, filth is heavier-than-air. and treat, through research and writing, What happens to what is left? We look cases pertaining to the nebulous fields of the for treatments. We seize the occasion of energy and environment in Lebanon. In the witnessing an earth that has not yet been context of their work, they took samples, and flattened. This place pushes us away from it. examined and collected wastes. They wrote We want to approach its spectacle. and proposed long-term treatments. They Abolish language. From a temporal were threatened as well as commissioned perspective, waste is the antithesis of the by the authorities. They organized symposia classical work of art displayed and preserved and stood in court until one of the scientists within the museum space. While the former was arrested and accused of false testimony. is comprised of expired matter that has Interestingly enough, their first pursued case survived beyond its time and thus banished was the reconstruction of Beirut. Their slogan and excluded from the city – if not impelled read as follows: “We refuse the reconstruction to be recycled, and hence transformed into of Beirut and its downtown on a mountain of something else – the latter is comprised of industrial and construction waste!” both immaterial and material value that is required to survive and be preserved How does this relate to the river? infinitely beyond its time. “Is the museum a landfill fixed in time?”, The same year, SEDRA published a trilogy the Housing Committee for the Preservation of articles in Revue du Liban presenting an of the Underground also asks. What type of alternative plan for the reconstruction of art will the probation of refuse instigate? Art downtown Beirut, one that would not entail whiffs of new refuse.2 the expulsion of its residents, nor efface What will become of the wastes contained the central city’s mnemonic legacies. Below by the canalization of the river? The scientific is an excerpt from the third essay entitled collective SEDRA3 was formed in 1993 in “Beirut and the Downtown: We Want: defiance to the Horizon 2000 project; what Historical Heritage and Green Spaces”. In was later to become Solidere. It was founded it, they outlay their year-long study of the by its three members: Dr. Milad Jarjou’i an Normandy landfill and their proposal for its analytical chemist, Dr. Pierre Malychef an rehabilitation through turning it into a public ecotoxicologist and herbal pharmacologist, park, as well as a nature preserve for flora and and Dr. Wilson Rizk, a hydrologist and nuclear migrant animals: engineer. The three scientists met in 1988 “By the siliceous depths of the sea, we when they were assigned by the president will grow coastal ponds made of fresh water, of the central inspection at the Lebanese lagoons supplied by treated sewage water government – or ‘Republiche Libanes 1987’ as that has been extracted from a discrete construed by the fake company that hosted purification station. The station’s primary the scum and trashy lingo4 -- as the official and secondary refineries and aeration basins investigators of the toxic waste trade that will be installed at near ground level and travelled by sea from Italy into Lebanon with will be encompassed by a thick protective the help of one of its still presently reigning vegetal blanket of flowers and greenery. political parties. In this framework, the three These ponds burgeoning with trees and

9 aquatic plants and seeded with ovoviviparous fish (that conceive alevins who are capable of swimming immediately upon birth and who prey on mosquito larvae) will become the haven of several species of migrant and aquatic birds who will travel hither to rest and grow. Of them, we could list ducks and geese, grebes, herons, cranes, sandpipers and most importantly, storks, as since they are becoming an endangered species. Hereby, this artificially grown/turned natural reserve will become a safe environment for them to live and reproduce freely. […]In any case, within a year or two, this national park clad with densely wooded pathways surrounded by grass and flora all watered with treated sewage water, will become a place of study, promenade and meditation for the city dwellers, students and relatives of the Missing in Lebanon for whom an entrancing collective memorial stone will be erected in the midst of state. A few years later, in 1998, Sukleen a growing bed of flowers.” founded its sister company, Sukimi, for the If we were to go back and exhume the management of solid waste. Sukimi built its Normandy landfill, we’d find the sea. In 1925, factory on a new canalization of the Beirut the sea was paved for the first time under River, and hence narrowed its streamline. the auspices of French colonisation. During This led to a catastrophic flood in 2005 that the war that has not ended, we turned the overtook an entire bridge. avenue of the French into a landfill. After the Our bodies leak while Beirut transforms war that has supposedly ended, the landfill into an island of trash, a catalyst for an was neither turned into an aquatic reserve, anticipated political awakening, and a nor into a public park, nor into a collective swathe of collective epidemics. We look memorial for the Missing. The landfill has for treatments; we seize the occasion of become Zeytouna Bay sold by Solidere, who witnessing an earth that hasn’t been had signed that they would turn it into a flattened yet. This place pushes us away public park. from it. We want to approach its spectacle. Once again, the anosmatic theatre has The anosmatic theatre has not killed us returned under a new guise gathered by the yet. Accumulation kills. This underground domestic space and exiled by the sovereign is reminiscent of so many ‘something else’. state. The sun hasn’t been shut down since We try to hold our breath; we hesitate and the mid 90s. Time was protracted. The move while we attempt to topple the trash protraction has accumulated. Mountains of a nation. Nation-states eat our histories. were emptied and refilled with imminently While we scour for direct confrontation and abeyant trash. Mountains went Missing, an safe resolutions, we wonder: What should be absence of forests5 have resurged. Artworks preserved? Waste Accumulation Kills. recursively accommodate new artworks. Do we want to die? Waste eats history. After Solidere was founded in the early 1990s to Recycle Beirut from the remnants of international waste mingled with empty mountains and the entrails of an underearth, it created Sukleen to collect and commodify trash as private currency legitimised by the

References

1 A Lebanese folk tale figure of a man the present Lebanese antiquity again corroborates that, according la recherche académique. who abducts children and puts them law edicted in 1933 decrees that all to the illicit juridical, time and 4 The correct Italian translation of the in a black trash bag that he carries at archeological sites, buildings and the law do not exist underground. ‘Republic of Lebanon’ or the ‘Lebanese all times on his back. His name can be artefacts should be preserved intact It is ungovernable. ‘The Housing Republic' would be‘repubblica translated into ‘Bagman’. and protected from time, the new Committee for the Preservation of libanese’. 2 Interestingly enough, the newly museum directorship had to move the Underground’ asks, “Is Sursock a 5 In Arabic, the noun for ‘forest’, re-opened Museum of Sursock, its renovation and expansion to landfill”? ghaba, is derived from the verb where this publication will be the underground. Three new floors, 3 SEDRA is the acronym for the ghaba: to become absent. While launched, has recently morphed 20 meters in depth/height, were Scientific Society of Energy and walking in a forest, I become absent. into an artwork. Since the Lebanese constructed under the museum’s the Environment for Academic government has enlisted the museum structure hosting two new exhibition Research/Société scientifique de as an archeological building and spaces and a storage space. This l’environnement et de l’énergie pour

10 Wild imaginations: The «Beirut River crocodile» frenzy About the author In mid-July 2013, news began to circulate of one animal.9 Peter Prodromou, England’s version of or more crocodiles spotted in the Beirut River, Australia’s ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ – known to and the city’s inhabitants became ensnared followers as ‘Safari Pete,’ was flown to Beirut, in the jaws of a yearlong crocodile frenzy. A but left empty-handed days later, finding it July 24th report in the daily Al Joumhouria, impossible to plunge into the toxic stream.10 accompanied by pictorial evidence of a lone Finally, it was for fisherman Fadi Baalbaki crocodile on the river’s banks, triggered the fever that the ‘Beirut River Crocodile’ would become and bestowed credibility on claims that at least the ‘catch of the day’ on April 3rd 2014. Images two other crocodiles were lurking in the river’s of Baalbaki posing alongside the 137 cm long, waters, and measured up to 4 meters in length 9.5 kg-heavy crocodile with a duct-taped snout and 1 meter in width.1 The pictured crocodile, were swiftly transmitted across national it was confirmed, belonged to the species media.11 Custody of the crocodile was eventually Crocodylus niloticus,1 or Nile crocodile – the granted, as pre-ordained, to Animals Lebanon, second largest extant reptilian and, as citizens which set out to arrange for the animal’s would repeatedly be reminded, one of the most transfer abroad to an appropriate nature dangerous worldwide to humans. Readers were reserve or conservation centre. On June 30th asked to refrain from approaching the sighting 2014, the crocodile made headlines for the last area, and from hurting or killing the crocodile(s) time when its new home was announced: the if encountered.2 UK-based centre Crocodiles of the World.12 Questions arose as to how the crocodile(s) What might explain the enthusiasm with might have come to infest the river’s waters. which the ‘Beirut River Crocodile’ was met? Was it originally destined to be a pet, only to Evolutionary biologist David P. Barash provides be released in the river by a vendor or owner potential insight into this question, noting when it grew too large and vicious to keep? that seeing animals gives humans a “new Had it arrived on its own by making its way appreciation for reality itself, since their vitality through salty waters? Could the rising water not only mirrors but magnifies our own.”13 levels of wintertime bring concealed crocodile Philosopher Anca Ghaeus expounds on this populations into sight along the river’s lengths? point, emphasizing the centrality of animals’ Could these populations spread via the sea biological similarity and dissimilarity to the and wash up on other riverbanks and beaches allure that they hold. Ghaeus suggests that even in the country? How much of a threat did for only marginally similar animals, those traits the crocodile(s) pose to humans living in the that are shared with humans “concern essential river’s proximity?3 And how could a crocodile aspects of existence such as birth, death, [and] survive in a river infamous for being a dumping bodily transformation over time.” Looking ground for industrial waste, sewage, and at animals then provides humans with the slaughterhouse refuse?4 In other words, how exciting opportunity to witness the unfolding could a blatantly ‘unnatural’ environment play of a vitality that reflects their own. On the other host to ‘nature’? hand, and particularly significant in this case, Ensuing investigations featured statements animals’ dissimilarities – their ability to soar by employees of the nearby fish market and in the sky or lurk in the depths of water – have garbage collection company Sukleen, as well as the potential to “enrich our lives”, enabling us to residents of surrounding neighbourhoods who “discover new meanings”14 and ways of being testified to having seen the crocodile from as that complement and extend those which we early as the year 2000.5 Members of the police possess. force, military officials, ministerial dignitaries, Dissimilarities enrich our lives, specifically print journalists, television crews, and scores by triggering our curiosity and providing of locals and tourists headed to the river in the fodder for our imagination. Michel Foucault hope of finding the ever-elusive crocodile.6 underscores the importance of curiosity, Nadia Christidi Fisherman tried their hand at coaxing the suggesting that it “evokes ‘concern’; it evokes is a PhD student in History crocodile into their nets, but the creature the care one takes for what exists and could and Anthropology of wrestled and gnawed its way out each and exist; a readiness to find strange and singular Science, Technology and every time.7 what surrounds us; a certain relentlessness Society at MIT. She studies human-animal and Amidst public reassurances that only one to break up our familiarities and to regard environmental relations crocodile inhabited the river, and that it had otherwise the same things… a casualness in within contemporary most likely been dumped by its owner, the regard to the traditional hierarchies of the warfare in the Middle East. 15 Nadia previously held Ministry of Agriculture, Municipality of Beirut, important and essential.” It is here then that appointments at Beirut and NGO Animals Lebanon worked together we might find a key to understanding the Art Center and Darat al to coordinate a rescue-capture effort.8 Animals ‘Beirut River Crocodile’ frenzy, for the reptilian’s Funun and has worked Lebanon Director Jason Mier took the helm of difference seems to have unleashed citizens’ independently with Ashkal Alwan and the Young Arab the 20-person expedition tasked with treading care for what could exist and rendered ancillary, Theatre Fund. the river’s treacherous shallows in pursuit of the if only temporarily, the banal entanglements of

11 everyday life. and slithers along to the River Thames… Like others around me, I too became caught As I imagine such scenarios, I mourn the up in the Lebanese crocodile hysteria. Animal loss of possibility that the crocodile’s capture welfare considerations aside, I found myself posed. With Beirut’s return to normalcy – with continuing to imagine scenarios in which the rumours and hysterics being replaced by official crocodile managed to escape Baalbaki’s net and accounts and order – the spark of curiosity was still swimming in the Beirut River waters. and imagination that had briefly flickered In one storyline, other pet owners and vendors was once again extinguished. Insisting on follow suit, dumping their overgrown reptilians imagining nonetheless, I resist in my own way into the river, and the Nile crocodile becomes a the reversion to stagnation and monotony, thriving non-native species; the re-introduction and entertain a dream I share with Foucault: a of life into the largely stagnant stream triggers a “dream of a new age of curiosity” in which there new ecological balance and results in a thriving is no distinction between “good” and “bad” ‘natural’ eco-system. In another less optimistic information, and “the paths and the possibility one, the crocodiles’ diet of toxic waste triggers of comings and goings” are infinite.16 physiological mutations – Godzilla-style – and a Meanwhile, fantasies aside, the very pack of ‘unnatural’ monsters rampages Beirut, ordinary ‘Beirut River Crocodile’ remains in a wreaking havoc in its streets. In a third, Baalbaki carefully controlled and monitored (‘unnatural and Crocodiles of the World remain a reality, but natural’) environment in Oxfordshire, England. the mutated crocodile escapes from the centre

Anatomical sketches of the Crocodylus Niloticus and its taxanomic tree

References

1 Awwad, Shadi. “Masab Nahr River.” The National. 5 August 2013. co.uk/2012/03/20/the-crocodile- Evolved to Love Watching Animals.” Beirut ‘Mawtin’ lil Tamaseeh!” [The Web. 25 August 2015. http://www. hunter-highburys-answer-to- Aeon. 13 May 2014. Web. 25 August Beirut River Estuary is ‘Home’ to thenational.ae/news/world/middle- steve-irwin/; Baird, Nicola. “Peter 2015. http://aeon.co/magazine/ Crocodiles!] Al Joumhouria. 24 July east/dont-look-away-theres-a- Prodromou: Crocodile Catcher psychology/why-humans-evolved-to- 2013. Web. 25 August 2015. http:// crocodile-in-that-beirut-river Specialist.” Islington Faces Blog. love-watching-animals/. www.aljoumhouria.com/news/ 7 Al Kantar, Bassam. “Timsah Beirut 26 November 2011. Web. 25 August 14 Ghaeus, Anca. “The Role of Love in index/84858 illa Faransa Qareeban.” [Beirut’s 2015. http://islingtonfacesblog. Animal Ethics.” Hypatia 27.3 (Summer 2 Ibid. Crocodile Off to France Shortly] com/2014/11/26/pete-prodromou- 2012), 590. 3 Ibid. Al Akhbar. 4 April 2014. Web. 25 crocodile-catcher-specialist/ 15 Foucault, Michel. Foucault Live 4 Saad, Khodr. “Crocodiles in Beirut: August 2015. http://al-akhbar.com/ 11 “Fisherman Captures Rare Crocodile (Interviews, 1966-84). Trans. John Stop Illegal Animal Trafficking.” Al node/203955 in Beirut River.” The Daily Star. 3 Johnston. Ed. Sylvere Lotringer. New Akhbar. 26 July 2013. Web. 25 August 8 “Beirut River Crocodile.” Animals April 2014. Web. 25 August 2015. York: Semiotext[e], 1989. 198-199. 2015. http://english.al-akhbar.com/ Lebanon. 26 July 2013. Web. 25 August http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/ Emphasis mine. node/16542 2015. http://www.animalslebanon. Lebanon-News/2014/Apr-03/252186- 16 Ibid, 198-199. 5 Abou Jaoude, Rayane and Jana El org/beirut-crocodile fisherman-catches-rare-crocodile-in- Hassan. “Crocodile Lurking in Beirut 9 Hope, Bradley. The National. 5 beirut-river.ashx River.” The Daily Star. 25 July 2013. August 2013. 12 Crocodiles of the World. “Crocodile Web. 25 August 2015. http://www. 10 Al Kantar, Bassam. Al Akhbar. Found in Beirut River Finds a New dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon- 4 April 2014; Johnson, Sarah. “The Home.” Facebook. 30 June 2014. News/2013/Jul-25/224970-crocodile- Crocodile Hunter: Highbury’s Web. 25 August 2015. https://www. lurking-in-beirut-river.ashx Answer to Steve Irwin.” Islington facebook.com/184879921566189/ 6 Hope, Bradley. “Don’t Look Away, Now. 20 March 2012. Web. 25 posts/670986819622161/ There’s A Crocodile in That Beirut August 2015. http://islingtonnow. 13 Barash, David P. “Why Humans

12 Map illustrating the Beirut River Crocodile’s movement from initial capture to import into Lebanon and repatriation in the UK

Portraits (from left to right) of: Fadi Baalbaki, Peter Prodromou, and Jason Meir About the author [Editorial continued...] These intervention alongside visual material he has created to are based on existing studies and analysis, as accompany the upcoming installation. well as drawn from unwritten stories and oral In attempting to sketch a portrait of Nahr histories. Fictional narratives are conjured by Beirut, we highlight the responsibility citizens Nadia Christidi and Jessica Khazrik, urbanist have in resisting fatalism in all its forms. The Mayssa Fattouh Sarah Lily Yassine presents her research on sound installation by Avakian has configured urban transformation, and theOtherDada part of this venture and acts as a mediator is Co-Founder and Artistic address questions of environmental impact. between neighbouring, disconnected areas Director of TandemWorks. She spearheaded formal Community meetings organized by TW and the buried river that, every once in a and informal art platforms around Bourj Hammoud and Badawi are while, has its presence revived through and is responsible for presented in summary form in order to give an unpredictable event, a water stream, a further developing spaces voice to the residents and stakeholders, as are Masterplan, a graffiti, or more recently, the such as Katara Art Center in Doha, where she was the workshops conducted by Public Works. trash crisis. These are the many forms of life Artistic Director and Moreover, artistic interventions by artists that Nahr Beirut continues to be afflicted by, in Curator and Al Riwaq Marwan Rechmaoui and Omar Fakhoury have silence, solitary, behind closed walls, but where Gallery in Manama, as Curatorial and Programme been included in the publication as a metaphor movement still and always occurs. Manager. Mayssa is based for intervention in the public realm. A review in Doha and holds a BFA by Rayya Badran of the artist Vartan Avakian’s in Fine Arts from the Lebanese University. proposed sound installation is present

13 14 Marwan Rechmawi is an artist based in Beirut. His work focuses on urban dynamics, demographics and behaviours. He uses industrial materials such as concrete, rubber, tar and glass to create tactile works on a large scale. His works have been exhibited in Lebanon and internationally. He has participated in the Istanbul Biennial (2015), São Paulo Bienal, Brazil (2006), and the Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2005 and 2013).

15 Mapping Beirut through its tenants' stories About the author “Mapping Beirut Through its Tenants’ Stories” The project consists of workshops is a project that aims at opening a debate conducted with groups of young men and about housing possibilities in Beirut, and an women in which we collectively initiate urban attempt at understanding and mapping the research that looks closely into one of Beirut’s city through the narratives of its residents. neighbourhoods. Through this activity, we aim to involve youths and students from Initiated by Public Works Studio, the project different neighbourhoods and universities in focuses on the experiences of what are referred the research, reflection and production process, to as the old tenants of Beirut, ensuring they with the purpose of enabling them to develop have a place to live in the city despite ongoing concepts around spatial justice and housing attempts to evict them, whether by the new rights. We consider that the loss of homes rent law or by de-facto market procedures. without guarantees of rehousing is a loss that Since its issuance in April 2014, the new rent is not limited to old tenants, but concerns the law has spurred a series of ongoing debates entire city, its inhabitants and its future. about the right to housing especially to low and middle income residents, and has acted The following is the outcome of the second as a symbolic tool to further alienate and workshop conducted in the neighbourhood of exert social and psychological violence on old Badawi. tenants. We argue that the primary actors in drafting the new law and the major benefiters A History of the Neighbourhood from the process of eviction are a handful of real-estate developers. In light of this reality, Badawi is located on the Eastern limits this project aims to recast the debate around of administrative Beirut. It is the last the old rent law and to propose new ways neighbourhood within the cadastral district of engaging with it, departing from people’s of Achrafieh that borders the river and that rights to their city, and to provide venues to separates it from the area belonging to the contest current urban policies. municipality of Bourj Hammoud. Badawi is historically known as the area surrounding the Khalil Badawi Street that extends along

Badawi Morphology map

Public Works is a design and research studio initiated in 2012 by Nadine Bekdache and Abir Saksouk. The collective overlays the disciplines of architecture and graphic design with the study of urbanism. Its aim is to spur thinking on the interface between social practices, representations and the built environment, in the context of spatial injustices in Lebanon.

16 Old residents map New tenants map Eviction map

the Beirut River from the hills of Karam el Maronite families who came to Beirut from Zeitoun to Armenia Street. Before the creation the North looking for work. of the Khalil Badawi Street, the site consisted of forested and agricultural hills that extended At the beginning of the civil war, in 1976 East from the railroad until the Beirut River. to be precise, Badawi was shelled, and a number of its inhabitants left their homes In 1922, around ten thousand Armenians and displaced elsewhere. Consequently, a arrived fleeing the massacres in the Cilicia number of families moved to the area and region. Back then, the Red Cross and the French squatted the empty houses. Later in the 1980s, Mandate authorities installed thousands of an agreement between the owners and the tents on the empty lands of North East Beirut, “squatters” became the basis upon which specifically in the Medawar district. leasing contracts changed to suit whoever chose to stay in the neighbourhood. Hence the With the arrival of Armenian refugees, the area increasingly included a mix of people as a first informal neighbourhood in Beirut was result of the many migrations that had passed formed: the Medawar camp in Karantina. As through it. of 1926, through the initiative of Armenian associations and with the help of the Mandate During the past few years, and before the authorities, permanent solutions were ground floors of residential buildings turned proposed to lodge refugees outside the camps. into cafés and restaurants in Mar Mikhael, They were therefore gradually moved into the low price of land and low rents in the neighbouring areas outside of the Karantina neighbourhood compared with other areas in district, such as Bourj Hammoud, Karam el Achrafieh, were appealing to new residents. Zeitoun, Hadjin Camp and Khalil el Badawi. Badawi was considered on the border of the city (almost a suburb), but it also benefited The Armenian Hunchak party was from services such as electricity provided in an active political agent since the early the administrative area of Beirut. urbanization of the Badawi area. With the outbreak of the 1958 revolts, the party aligned Today, the majority of the residents in itself with the Lebanese left, opposing the Badawi are Armenians and are old tenants. then President Camille Chamoun. During Land purchases in the area doesn’t compare that period Badawi was transformed into with other areas in Beirut, particularly since a demarcation line. In light of the political many Armenian owners refrain from selling conflicts between the Hunchak and the their properties. Despite this, the area is Tashnag parties, supporters of the latter currently undergoing considerable changes left the Badawi area and headed to Bourj that are forcing its old residents to sell or be Hammoud. A number of houses were left evicted from their homes, and threatening to empty and subsequently inhabited by demolish the area’s architectural fabric.

17 Sustainable Housing Arrangements in the following the construction of the Yerevan Neighbourhood: highway in the year 2000.

Old Rent, Informal Building and Religious New Rent Institutions In diverse locations in the neighbourhood, Despite the destruction of old one-floor rooms are rented in apartments in order to homes in order to build high rise buildings, increase a family’s income. These rooms are Badawi remains mostly inhabited by its usually rented out to migrant workers for 150 former residents. In addition to old rent or 200 USD per room, which also includes a contracts, housing arrangements initiated by shared bathroom and kitchen. There are also local organizations guaranteed the presence rooms or ‘foyers’ for rent. of long-time residents. In our research, we discovered arrangements that involve religious On another level, there are several local or civil organizations that ensured housing in businesses in the neighbourhood where the neighbourhood, and specifically worked some owners (and often tenants) renovate towards keeping the older residents in their the building or divide the apartments in homes through a form of subsidized housing. order to rent them out at a higher price, thus For instance, there are several plots in Badawi benefiting from the additional income, and belonging to the convent and which are being taking advantage of the price hike taking place offered at cheaper prices. Another emerging throughoutthe entire city. For instance, an old phenomena isthat of ‘temporary housing’, woman owns a building with four floors. She a local initiative launched by the Armenian renovated and refurbished the apartments community to preserve their social fabric five years ago and is renting at prices that and ensure subsidized housing. As such, and reach 1000 USD per month, even when the thanks to the initiative of an Armenian centre, apartments are no larger than 20 or 30 square a building was purchased to help poor families meters. She is selective about whom she leases find rent-free housing for a period of one or the flats to, and is not content with whomever two years. comes along. She imposes conditions related to religion, personal status, and sectarian. Evictions The apartments are empty most of the time. Another case is that of the owner of a famous Official cadastral registry records indicate grocery shop located west of Abyad Camp. He that there is an active wave of land purchases bought two plots of land in Abyad Camp two taking place in the neighborhood since 2010. years ago, which were both one-storybuildings. He added two floors to one house and three to In the context of rising real estate prices in the second one. He renovated them and rents Beirut and growing investment opportunities them out for 300 to 400 USD per apartment, in the mostly to foreigners.

neighborhood, Badawi neighborhood residents - specifically those living around Khalil al-Badawi Street – are subjected to eviction pressures. In many cases, the tenants are proposing to the landlords that they buy their homes at reasonable prices, but the owners refuse to sell. Some owners are also refusing to receive the rent from tenants, but tenants are making sure to send the amount through a lawyer, to achieve immunity and the right to prove their legitimacy in place.

As for the residential block south of Abyad Camp, it has been completely evicted and mostly demolished during the past few years,

References

Interview with Ernesto Chahoud, a Interview with Rani Rajji, architect Website for Beirut’s neighborhoods: Kassir, Ahlam Jamaleddine, Jean neighbourhood resident and urban researcher Michel Aoun, Joanna Haddad, Monica Wikipedia entries for Hunchak and Basbous, Nathalie Bekdache, Alain Interview with Antranik Dakessian, Urban research and mapping Tashnag parties Ibrahim. professor at Haigazian University conducted by Public Works Studio The maps are the result of fieldwork Interview with Yervan Balian, a Mona Fawaz and Isabelle by participants in the workshop neighbourhood resident and owner Beylan, report on the unofficial ‘To Map Badawi from its residents’ of a copper factory neighbourhoods in Beirut, 2003 narratives’ and they are: Mayssa

18 River concrete: Vartan Avakian's ghost river About the author In her essay “Holy Water”, published in her The concepts of unpredictability and risk famous collection of essays entitled The White are important economic terms in today’s Album, Joan Didion charts her relationship reigning capitalist era (where some might to water. Less concerned with the ‘politics argue that we have entered post or hyper of water’, the author investigates instead capitalist conditions). Avakian is interested in the mechanical, physical transportation of how economic risk calculation is intrinsically water. Or more precisely, she closely follows linked to our fears of unpredictability. It is in the physical, material movement of water. this resistance – our need and obsession to By examining the inner workings of how control and predict (hear, produce) nature – and why water is moved from one county to that the artist’s piece comes to life. Just as the another in the State of California in the U.S. – a concrete watershed helps transport the flow of state notorious for its droughts – Didion draws water from one place to the next (when there our attention to the fact that the amount of is water to speak of that is), the composition water given to a county rested on the supply of the piece emulates this by transporting the and demand of its consumers in different sound of the water flow to specified points parts of the state. The cities or counties in its surroundings. Pedestrians and visitors will make their demands of water, which is alike will be able to listen to the river from then dispatched according to a very precise specific points, where the sound of water is schedule. The very fact that water is perceived transported via external pipelines. By doing as merchandise, as a good within the capitalist so, the artist points to the absent-present market economy, is something noteworthy spectre of the river. While the watershed is not only for the author, but also for artist there, carved into the land, territorially and Vartan Avakian in his yet untitled installation geographically delimitating the city, the actual involving the Beirut River. The work will be river that runs through it does not. Or at least, installed this winter, once the rainy season it only exists intermittently depending on how is at its peak, when at least some water is much it rain there was the previous winter. running through the river. With the current waste crisis, Lebanon While we tend to regard water as a natural is and has been facing – especially with resource, it is also and undeniably, a marketed the now much dreaded rain season – the good. In its many forms and functions, threat of contamination of the riverbed. This water is tested, purified, moved, controlled, undoubtedly poses very grave environmental bottled, contained, marketed, bought and problems, but it also increases the variables sold. Immense infrastructures are built to that the piece itself might encounter. Another help transport and contain it. Didion astutely element will thus factor into the making remarks that “it is easy to forget that the only of sound. No longer will the sound mirror natural force over which we have any control water against concrete, but new matter, an out here is water, and that only recently.” The unpredictable, unknown component, will ways in which we control and perceive water likely come into play. The unforeseeable, – the Beirut River, in this case – is also what but totally plausible scenario of dumped interests Avakian, whose fascination with waste becoming part of or indeed hindering the control of water is very much in line with the river’s flow – and ultimately Avakian’s Didion’s own thinking and passion for the installation – reinforces the need to pay subject. attention to the river’s existence as ‘controlled His intervention in the framework of matter’. While the water is contained between Tandem-Works, stems from a desire to walls of concrete, its sound is not, and any understand the relationship between matter unplanned event will surely alter the ways and movement, as well as water’s rapport in which it will sound through the pipes Rayya Badran with the natural as well as the urban realm. In that transport it. The more variable factors his piece, Avakian wants to make audible the intervene, the more likely the ‘output’ of is a writer based in Beirut. She earned her MA in sounds of the river in its different environs. the river’s sounds will feel less and less like Aural and Visual Cultures What the artist is concerned with is the flow something we can ever think to control. from Goldsmiths College, of water on its concrete watershed: how The act of ‘ghosting’, a term the artist has London. Her writing focuses on the convergence those two materialities interact, and what chosen to describe the action of transporting of theory, fiction and that very interaction might sound like. For sound from the river to its environs, works as sound and has published the artist, the sound of the water interacting a means to engage the listener, and thus the articles and texts in with other matter is a direct consequence of city’s inhabitant with her river. The gesture Artforum, (NY), Peeping Tom (Paris), Bidoun (NY), how the city built the watershed, and while of transporting sound through pipelines, Ibraaz (London). She is an water flowing might mirror an unpredictable, rather than recording it and placing it in instructor at the American indeterminate wave of sounds, the artist asks different parts of the city, highlights the University of Beirut and at the Académie Libanaise us and wants the piece itself to surrender to artist’s insistence that the piece wants to make des Beaux Arts. this unpredictability. audible the sound of flow rather than the

19 Circa 1920s presence of water. It is not enough to ‘remind’ hints of life from what we always considered us, as it were, about the existence of water to be dead and toxic. Instead of representation in the river (however intermittent), but to through recording, the artist has prioritized foreground how this flow is itself a question a direct, experiential way of interacting with of the interaction of elements, and a question the motion of this natural resource. It cannot of our own interaction with the river. Matter be reiterated throughout the year as it strictly against matter, solids and liquids, but more depends on the (un)natural stream, which only importantly the will to control nature even ever happens when it rains, when it snows. when it is scarce and contaminated. The pipes The ephemerality of the work mirrors the transport some parts of the river by echoing its vulnerability of the river. Pipes are just a few sounds outside the infrastructure that contains avenues from which we can sonically peak or and controls it. Perhaps the piece operates less zoom into the short life that runs through the as a sound installation and more like a sonic waterbed. mirror to Didion’s piece; an essayistic attempt to understand our relation to the river we forgot existed. Sound conjures the slightest

Credits

Editor: Mayssa Fattouh Acknowledgment: Vartan Avakian, 21db, Assaad A project by: In collaboration with: Copy editors: Samar Haddad (Arabic), Al-Assaad, As-Safir, Karim Attoui, Georges Awde, Nora Parseghian (Armenian), Fouad Bechouati, Adib Dada, Richard Douzjian, Ghalya Saadawi (English) Nada Fattouh, Sarine Hagopian, Vrouyr Contributors: Rayya Badran, Nadia Christidi, Joubanian, Sari Kassis, Arpie Mangassarian, Omar Fakhoury, Jessika Khazrik, Joanne Nucho, Fatme Masri, Jared McCormick, Milena Sales, Marwan Rechmaoui, Public Works, Sarah Lily Alfred Tarazi, theOtherDada, Fadi Tofeili, Fahad Yassine, TandemWorks, theOtherDada Wahedi, Anna Wallace-Thompson, Young Arab Supported by: Translators: Rayya Badran (English), Theatre Fund Ziad Chakaroun (Arabic), Nare Kalemkerian (Armenian) Design: Public Works