Souk Reconstruction, Beirut

Description

Designed by Massimo Carmassi and Gabriella Carmassi, with Gabriele Lelli and Davide Cristofani, the project for the Beirut Souk was conceived as a 1994 competition proposal for the reconstruction of the market district through what the authors define as a “foundational drawing”, inspired by Middle Eastern urban traditions and by construction techniques suited to the city’s microclimatic conditions. Rather than treating the site as a field of isolated objects, the proposal rebuilds an entire piece of city, allowing the preserved buildings and the outer edges of the area to reconnect naturally with a new urban fabric. The site, sloping towards the seafront, is divided into two sectors. The upper and larger one is organised as a compact grid of blocks carved out of a uniform urban plate by four slightly converging streets that follow the ancient traces, together with five narrower parallel routes crossing the quarter. One of the inclined streets, corresponding to Suk Ayyass, is protected by a glazed roof and becomes a covered gallery. A second segmented route, composed of two circular squares, one square piazza and two lenticular stretches, cuts through the more regular fabric. Along Weigand Street, a full-height loggia joins the Suk Ayyass to form the principal covered route of the scheme, arranged as a T-shaped system. Construction and urban form are tightly linked. The new buildings are conceived with thick load-bearing sack walls made of two leaves of light solid brick acting as pre-reinforced formwork for cast concrete. One- and two-storey terraces protected by walls, together with courtyards of different sizes, translate local patterns of inhabitation and climate into a contemporary architectural language. Below the whole area, three underground parking levels are integrated into the scheme. The lower sector addresses the large covered market through a sequence of tall parallel brick walls of substantial thickness, connected at the top by steel centering and screened glazing and crossed by large arches beneath which a generous ramp links the two levels of the complex. Between the two sectors, an elementary elliptical block acts as a hinge, while other cylindrical or parallelepipedal solids and voids punctuate the scheme. The project proposes a district that would be recognisably new yet welcoming, flexible in use and firmly anchored to the constructive and urban traditions of Beirut.