Emergency Architecture and Planning: Recovering Beirut Post-Explosion

Following a series of economic, political and environmental crises that culminated in the Beirut explosion on August 4th 2020, the GSAPP Collective for Beirut, in collaboration with Assistant Professor Hiba Bou Akar invites a group of multidisciplinary professionals to a round table discussion that explores architecture and cities in a time of emergency and political deadlock through ecological, planning, and policy lenses. The discussion will engage questions of the built environment on a variety of social and infrastructural scales.

Participants include representatives of the GSAPP Collective for Beirut alumni , Iyad Abou Gaida (‘19 MS.AAD), Marylynn Pauline Antaki (‘19 MS.AAD), Aude Azzi (‘18 MS.AAD), Charles Hajj (‘16 MS.AAD), Mayssa Jallad (‘17 MS.HP), Ibrahim Kombarji (’20 MS.AAD), Dina Mahmoud (‘14 MS.AAD), Maya Rafih (‘11 MS.AAD), Roula Salamoun (‘11 MS.AAD), and current students Aya Abdallah (‘22 M.ARCH), Mickaella Pharaon (‘22 M.ARCH).

Faculty from Columbia GSAPP and throughout the University including Dean Amale Andraos; Hiba Bou Akar, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning; Ziad Jamaleddine, Assistant Professor of Architecture; Andrés Jaque, Associate Professor of Professional Practice and MS. Advanced Architectural Design; Laura Kurgan, Professor of Architecture and Director of the Center for Spatial Research; Jorge Otero-Pailos, Professor and Director of Historic Preservation; Mark Wasiuta, Lecturer in Architecture; Zainab Bahrani, Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology, Department of Art History and Archeology; Manan Ahmed, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of History.

Colleagues from around the world including Mona Fawaz, Professor of Urban Planning, Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut; Marwan Ghandour, Emogene Pliner Professor, Director of the School of Architecture, Louisiana State University; Rania Ghosn, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Habib Haddad, Managing Partner, E14 Fund; Jean Kassir, Co-founder and managing editor of Megaphone; Adrian Lahoud, Dean of the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art; Abir Saksouk, Founding Partner, Public Works Studio; Nisreen Salti, Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, American University of Beirut; Rana Samara, Vice President of Nusaned; Hashim Sarkis, Dean, MIT School of Architecture and Planning; and Wael Sinno, UN-Habitat Area Coordinator.

GSAPP Collective for Beirut is an interdisciplinary student and alumni organization dedicated to the promotion, discussion, and reflection of contemporary issues in the middle east, and Lebanon specifically. It was founded organically in 2020, in the aftermath of the Beirut blast by a group of like-minded students and alumni who studied asynchronously at Columbia University. They are currently based both in Beirut and abroad (New York, London, Amsterdam, Toronto). For more information contact the Collective.