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 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 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. 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, 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.

HASHIM SARKIS

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.1 (A-F).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2004.

AFRICA: NORTHERN AFRICA;  IRAN;  ISRAEL;

FUTHER READING

Recent reconstruction activity in Beirut has generated extensive literature about the urban planning process as well as a renewed interest in urban and architectural history. Extensive research is currently being conducted in Beirut and in archives in Paris and Istanbul, led by a new generation of historians who are already beginning to make remarkable contributions to the understanding and reassessment of the city’s architectural heritage.

Buheiry, Marwan R., Beirut’s Role in the Political Economy of the French Mandate, 1919–1939, Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1986

Davie, May, Beyrouth et ses Faubourgs (1840–1940): une intégration inachevée, Beirut: Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain, 1996

Debbas, Fouad, Beyrouth: notre mémoire: promenade guidée à travers la collection de cartes postales, Beirut: Naufal, 1986; as Beirut, Our Memory: A Guided Tour with Illustrated Postcards from the Collection of Fouad Debbas, Beirut: Naufal, 1986

Khalaf, Samir, and Philip S. Khoury (editors), Recovering Beirut: Urban Design and Post-War Reconstruction, Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1993

Rowe, Peter G., and Hashim Sarkis (editors), Projecting Beirut: Episodes in the Construction and Reconstruction of a Modern City, Munich and New York: Prestel, 1998

Saliba, Robert, Beirut, 1920–1940: Domestic Architecture between Tradition and Modernity, Beirut: Order of Engineers and Architects, 1998

Salibi, Kamal Suleiman, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, London: Taurus, and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988