Rue Hamra, A Case of Urban Resilience in Beirut, Lebanon

Hamra Street in Beirut (Rue Hamra) was born and grew almost without warning in the late 1950s, in the absence of any municipal plan for development. The point of departure was the construction of a modern office building, the first building with a curtain wall system at the time, and with a famous sidewalk cafe at its base, the Horseshoe. In the heydays of the 1960s and 70s, Hamra Street was a hub for leftist cultural and political intellectuals. In the 1980s, in the middle of the civil war, Hamra Street lost its commercial power, but with its proximity to AUB, it endured as a liberal permissive place for mixed religious communities in a city fractured along its sectarian lines. In the post war decade of the 90s and early 2000, Hamra Street, with its affordable commercial stores and food outlets, continued as a destination for middle class Beiruties. Since the late 2000, Hamra Street has witnessed more than one false prediction of its eventual demise due to the gradual closure of its famous cafes, regional conflicts, market pressure and the rise of competing ‘fashionable’ streets. But the street kept on reincarnating itself in new forms and with new hopeful prospect. The workshop aims to map and document Hamra Street. The objective is to excavate, through drawing representational technique, its birth and evolution, and uncover the physical and spatial backbone that made it survive years of change and conflicts. The final output will be one large continuous oblique drawing of Rue Hamra, produced by the students as a group and exhibited at several venues, including the Arab Center for Architecture, Beirut.

Generously supported by Maha Arakji Kutay ‘94.