New City Life, Architectural Translation from Man & the City

Abstract

After rising geo-political issues, an acute economic crisis, a blast that destroyed half of the city and the to date coronavirus pandemic, Lebanon has been victim of its worst crisis of all time. Shops are closing, people are migrating and others are cutting off their expenses. Never has anyone seen such a disaster in the capital of Lebanon, Beirut. The aim of this Thesis is to revive the culturally rich area of Hamra by proposing an experience rather than products through a new business, social and physical formula for living and consuming in the city. My thesis explores the different social, cultural, historic, economic and physical layers of Hamra while also investigating the modern popular spaces of consumption, the malls and the souks. Thus, it proposes networks synthesized from the existing layers of Hamra and the “trendy” modern spaces of consumption that people are attracted to nowadays. "Unborder", an architectural intervention that is part of the New City Life’s network aiming at boosting Hamra’s experience and entertainment activities to increase its economy, is the structure that this Thesis will be focusing on as an attempt to set the guidelines for the design of the rest of the network. The design of this structure was informed by the research conducted throughout the Thesis, leading to a fully porous structure that is blurred with the outdoor and its circulation systems. Finally, this Thesis proved that synthetizing the existing layers of a city with trendy spaces that people are attracted to, can lead to a fully integrated, decentralized and dynamic structure at the urban scale while catering to people's needs at the architecture, social and object scales in order to revive the different fabrics of a city.