archaeological excavations, generated by the post-civil war reconstruction, have provided
further evidence that different civilizations have continuously inhabited the city since at
least the Iron Age. Hardly any architectural landmarks remain from before the 19th
century, with the exception of some religious buildings. Beirut remained a secondary
settlement to other cities along the eastern Mediterranean coast, such as Tripoli and
Damascus until 1831, when Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, in his failed insurrection against the
Ottomans, took it as a base, and attracted merchants and consuls. Since then, the city has
grown from a town of 10,000 to a metropolitan district of about 1.5 million today.
The early years of growth were supported by many Ottoman modernization projects,
conducted mostly through concessions to European companies. These included harbor
expansion, public utilities, military facilities, and transportation networks, and most
notably, the toll road to Damascus (1863). Buildings such as the Orozdi Bek Department
Store (1900), the Arts and Crafts School (1914), including some of its extramural
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 234
residential quarters and missionary educational facilities, display a Mediterranean
architectural character that attests to the open cultural exchange at the time.
During World War I, Beirut suffered a famine, losing much of its population of
100,000. A major urban-planning endeavor was mounted by the Ottomans, that would be
completed during the French mandate (1918–43) in the form of Place de l’Etoile. The
mandate created a new nation-state—Greater Lebanon—with Beirut as its capital. With
the exception of urban improvements in the city center, the mandate continued the
modernization-by-concession process started by the Ottomans. It was not until 1932, in
the face of social tensions caused in part by the Great Depression, that an attempt at
large-scale urban planning began. Two master plans were advanced: one by the Danger
Brothers in 1932 and one by Michel Ecochard in 1942. The first created commercial
centers for new residential areas, while the second introduced a major road network
linking the port and airport with the hinterland. Neither plan was implemented.
The building of the city’s new quarters and institutions was carried out by some of its
established architects, including Yousif Aftimos and Mardiros Altounian. Aftimos helped
develop the ornate facade architecture of the new avenues in the city center, such as the
Municipality Building (1933) and Maarad Street (1930s). Altounian elevated Oriental Art
Deco motifs, extending it to civic architecture for the Lebanese Parliament and the
National Museum buildings. The pre-World War II period also saw the rise of a new
generation of architects, such as Antoun Tabet, Farid Trad, Ilyas Murr, and Bahjat
Abdulnour. Tabet’s link with the studio of Auguste Perret heralded the expressive
application of concrete-and-steel technology by many engineer-architects of the period,
whereas the work of Murr and Trad extended the forms of late Ottoman architecture into
the French mandate (1918–43) and early independence (1943–58). This extension of
styles and building types attests to the continuity within the urban developmental culture
across the different political epochs. Interestingly, a new vernacular architecture was
developed during this period, featuring multistory residential buildings built to absorb the
growing population.
Beirut’s economic primacy in the region was boosted by the sudden loss of
competition from the city of Haifa and the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948.
This was supported by Lebanon’s strong banking and services sectors, and by the
presence of foreign business interests; it was paralleled by the strong intellectual and
political life that gave Beirut the reputation of being a breeding ground for regional
political and cultural movements. Architecture, however, remained cast in the
professional, technical arena. Following a brief civil war in 1958, urban development was
guided by a new welfare state and a new ministry of planning. Two major master plans
were proposed for Beirut; one by Constantinos Doxiadis in 1957–59 and one by Michel
Ecochard in 1963–64. Both master plans acknowledged the growth of the city and the
need to develop physical planning at a regional, and even a national, scale. The country’s
new institutions and infrastructure were given a strong modern image, as exemplified by
the Central Bank as designed by Swiss architects Addor et Julliard, among others.
However, the buildings were distributed mostly in the suburbs including such important
projects such as the Ministry of Defense (1965) and the Lebanese University (late 1960s)
by Maurice Hindieh and André Wogenscky. Hence, they did nothing to improve the
urban layout. Other architects of the period, such as Pierre el-Khoury, Bahije Khoury-
Makdisi, Wassek Adib, Pierre Neema, George Rayes, and Assem Salam, helped to
Entries A–F 235
generate a professional culture that guided Lebanon’s architecture more effectively than
the intellectual networks and academic institutions. For example, Khoury’s École
Technique provided a model for institutional buildings, whereas Adib’s collaborations
with Polish architect Karl Schayer provided the city with a facade along the seafront. The
Corniche combined a rational, structural frame with expressive ground planes and roofs.
With such buildings as the Shell Building (1962) by Schayer and Adib and the more
mannered work of Joseph Philippe Karam, the city acquired a new building type: a
mixed-use apartment building, that would come to dominate urban as well as suburban
development.
What emerged in the early 1960s as a vigorous expression of flexibility turned into a
formal anonymity in the 1970s under the pressure of speculative construction. Architects,
such as Pierre Neema and Michel Ecochard, sought a more institutional expressiveness,
as demonstrated by Neema’s Electricité du Liban (1962). Samir Khairallah and Assem
Salam would consciously incorporate regional styles, with Salam actively debating with
other Arab architects, such as Rifaat Chadirji (Iraq) and Jaafar Toukan (Jordan), about
national and Arab identity expressed through architecture. Despite the rise of many
schools of architecture, practice maintained its primacy in generating architectural
attitudes. This was caused by the continuation of a technical approach to architecture and
by the effectiveness of competition and open exchange that dominated the development
culture.
Beirut would witness exponential growth in population, from 10,000 within the
municipal district in 1920, to about 1.5 million in the metropolitan area by 1975. With
about half of Lebanon’s population occupying 5 percent of the land, Beirut had become a
virtual city-state. This imbalance in growth and development attracted the rural
population to the city, causing over-crowding in its immediate suburbs, and dire
socioeconomic problems. During the same period, the city also absorbed Palestinian
refugees increasing social tensions in the city. It led, along with religious and regional
conflicts, to a succession of wars between 1975 and 1990, and included the invasion of
the city by Israel in 1982. From 1975 to 1990, Beirut would suffer extensive damage,
leaving much of the commercial center’s architecture destroyed.
Since the 1990 Taef Accord, which reconciled Lebanon’s warring
factions, Beirut has been the focus of Lebanon’s reconstruction efforts.
The emphasis has been on rebuilding road networks and infrastructure
services and enlarging the city’s port and airport. Much of the urban
planning was guided by the Schéma Directeur (1986), a study developed by the Mission
Franco-Libanaise d’Étude et d’Aménagement, which called for
decentralization of the commercial activity toward regional centers, and
for a peripheral highway around the city. This study also stipulated a
special project for the city center, which was the area most affected by the
war.
Banque du Liban et d’Outre Mer,
Beirut, Lebanon, designed by Pierre el-
Khoury (1996)
The city center was eventually developed by a private real estate holding company that was set up to execute a master plan, developed by the Arab
consultant Dar al-Handasah (Shair and Partner). This plan caused controversy regarding
liquidation of property into shares, destruction of old streets and buildings, and the highly
speculative new development. The vague, urban design that characterized the plan was
further developed by American architectural firms, including Skidmore, Owings and
Merrill and Perkins and Will, but they failed to bring formal clarity to the street layout, or
create continuity between the streets and buildings. New buildings in the city center have
been burdened by the responsibility of recreating the lost heritage, and by an inability to
project a bold urban presence. Rafael Moneo’s design for the city bazaar has challenged
the separation between urban design and architecture. Public institutions that had been
built during the early independence period were retrofitted and enlarged. Many of them,
including the Sports City, the Lebanese University, and the Presidential Palace, were clad
with historicist styles, creating a link between the preservation policies of the city center
and the restoration of modern buildings. The more promising architects of this period,
Entries A–F 237
including pre-civil war architects like Pierre el-Khoury (Ghazal Tower and Moritra
Residential Building) and Jacques Ligier-Belair, as well as some of the younger
architects, are experimenting with newer, more articulate building typologies for different
uses.
In the late 1990s, when a constantly changing urban fabric and a rapidly disappearing
architectural heritage seemed to undermine the search for continuity and invention, a
postwar generation of architects was also challenged by speculative tendencies and
environmental and preservation problems.
