TY - CHAP
T1 - Introduction
AU - Hein, Carola
AU - Hanna, John
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - In the spring of 2021, professors and teachers from around the world taught studio courses and seminars that focused on the destruction and rebuilding of Beirut following the massive explosion that took place in the port on August 4, 2020. Some of these courses were taught collaboratively, others started as an independent project, but students and faculty attended each other’s presentations. Each studio was largely taught online due to the coronavirus crisis, which allowed for easier exchange among the groups. But it also prevented the studios from traveling to the field and closely surveying it. Faculty and students relied on presentations and input by colleagues from Beirut, material that could be found online, and documents that were available, mainly in English/French, which to a certain extent limited perspectives. Mutual interest in one another’s work led to some intriguing observations, including about pedagogical approaches and conceptual foundations. Each studio focused on specific premises, as the teachers chose diverse analytical viewpoints to address the rebuilding. At Delft University of Technology, teachers emphasized Beirut’s status as a port city and on the sea-land continuum as the analytical starting point for the design, and they collaborated with Yale University’s Alan Plattus ran a parallel seminar on the history of port cities. At the American University of Beirut (AUB), the instructors focused on the role of visionary planning for post-disaster rebuilding. In the University of Miami, neighborhood-level interventions inspired the teaching in Jean-François Lejeune upper-level spring studio. Similarly, in the German University in Cairo, Holger Gladys’s design studio focused on interventions at the neighborhood-level, namely the Karantina neighborhood, and its up-scalability to city and regional scales. At Tsinghua University, the design studio of Jian Liu and Yang Tang explored the multiple possibilities of rebuilding Beirut’s port and regenerating the city of Beirut on different scales by way of comprehensive urban design.
AB - In the spring of 2021, professors and teachers from around the world taught studio courses and seminars that focused on the destruction and rebuilding of Beirut following the massive explosion that took place in the port on August 4, 2020. Some of these courses were taught collaboratively, others started as an independent project, but students and faculty attended each other’s presentations. Each studio was largely taught online due to the coronavirus crisis, which allowed for easier exchange among the groups. But it also prevented the studios from traveling to the field and closely surveying it. Faculty and students relied on presentations and input by colleagues from Beirut, material that could be found online, and documents that were available, mainly in English/French, which to a certain extent limited perspectives. Mutual interest in one another’s work led to some intriguing observations, including about pedagogical approaches and conceptual foundations. Each studio focused on specific premises, as the teachers chose diverse analytical viewpoints to address the rebuilding. At Delft University of Technology, teachers emphasized Beirut’s status as a port city and on the sea-land continuum as the analytical starting point for the design, and they collaborated with Yale University’s Alan Plattus ran a parallel seminar on the history of port cities. At the American University of Beirut (AUB), the instructors focused on the role of visionary planning for post-disaster rebuilding. In the University of Miami, neighborhood-level interventions inspired the teaching in Jean-François Lejeune upper-level spring studio. Similarly, in the German University in Cairo, Holger Gladys’s design studio focused on interventions at the neighborhood-level, namely the Karantina neighborhood, and its up-scalability to city and regional scales. At Tsinghua University, the design studio of Jian Liu and Yang Tang explored the multiple possibilities of rebuilding Beirut’s port and regenerating the city of Beirut on different scales by way of comprehensive urban design.
KW - Beirut
KW - 2020
KW - explosion
KW - MIT
KW - TU Delft
KW - German University in Cairo
KW - American University in Beirut
UR - https://doi.org/10.47982/wgt14d21
M3 - Foreword/postscript
T3 - CPCL Series
SP - 8
EP - 9
BT - Design Pedagogies in Times of Crisis
A2 - Hein, Carola
A2 - Hanna, John
PB - SOAP | Stichting OpenAccess Platforms
CY - Rotterdam
ER -