Rouwaysset: A modern vernacular

This analysis/project was done in collaboration with students from the School of Architecture at the Acad�mie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, supervised by Naji Assi and Tony Chakar.It was presented as a conference during the Rendez-vous de l�Architecture at La Villette, Paris. It will be presented again as a slide show in Barcelona, at the Tapies Foundation.The text accompanying this slide show is taken from an article written by Tony Chakar and published in the Cultural Supplement of the Annahar newspaper.

 

 

 

 

 

This study is an attempt to answer these 2 questions:

1) Did the Rouwaysset area succeed in forming an architectural language particular to it, enabling us to qualify its [illegal] constructions as vernacular?

2) Would the familiar ways of architectural drawing be sufficient to write down this language, or do we need to come up with new ways of writing?

 

 

 

 

 

 

What goes on inside is even more surprising: on one lot, where usually one building exists, there 5, 6, even 10 buildings struggling for the faintest ray of sunshine, on the smallest bit of space.

�Public Space� is a notion that does not exist in Rouwaysset. What does exist is a shared space, liable to become private at any second by the actions of the users.

 

 

 

The relation between any building in Rouwaysset on the one hand, and the buildings and empty spaces surrounding it, is a relation of perpetual and resumed violence. A violence that shapes these buildings and spaces and is shaped by them.

A second conclusion would be that the urban tissue of Rouwaysset does not stabilize and take on a definitive form. It doesn�t even seek stability because it would kill it. So it expands on the expense of itself, it eats from its own flesh to stay alive.

 

 

 

 

 

Upon entering one of the region�s most populated alleys, the students were stopped by a man who, as they discovered later, could enter any house, with no apparent objection from its inhabitants. Where did the power of that man come from?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While other suburbs strive to establish a relation of difference with Beirut, by insisting on a visual relation which could be summed up by the term �overlooking�, Rouwaysset seems to be completely ignoring it. It turns its back to Beirut not because it doesn�t want to see it, but because Beirut is there, inside Rouwaysset. At least, its violence is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The inside of Kozah Building, so ordinary looking from the outside, tends towards extreme, even delirious, spatial solutions. Has it performed the �spatial lobotomy� that Rem Koolhaas speaks of when talking about Manhattan?

The culture of congestion and spatial contamination at its best, or worst.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stable and the ever-changing, their complete inter-dependence and relativity, how can these be written? Can the �classical� architectural language, the writing with plans, sections and facades, a re-constitution of the narrative 3 dimensional illusion invented by Alberti, be enough to write down what changes?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henceforth, and when writing Rouwaysset, we will turn the logic of the architectural drawing on its head. What it un-stable, contingent and dynamic will be written in thick continuos lines; the dashed and dotted thin lines will be used for the other information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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