Architecture & War & Creating New Conflicts

The open roof of Architect Bernard Khoury's nightclub in Beirut opened to the beautiful night skyline only a few months ago in this photo by Alfred Seiland for The New York Times.

It is ironic and poignant to re-read NY Times Architecture Critic's Nicolai Ouroussoff's tour through Lebanon with native architect Bernard Khoury. Through Ouroussoff's words, and Khoury's controversial architecture, we learn that there is as much a schism in how to rebuild an area after war as there is in the tensions leading up to it. It is hard not to think of our own World Trade Center -- those who want to sanitize the site, and others, like Khoury, who believe that scars, like wrinkles, were earned and are part of the soul of the culture.

In Khoury's Beirut there are tensions on how to deal with the public and private spaces, of male and female relationships, of Westerners versus Arabs, of upper class to the common man, of thousands of years of history to the 21st Century.

It is probably, for the most part, a moot point now. The multi-media presentation published in May 2006 of the Sunday Magazine may very well be all that is left of the last incarnation of Lebanon. 

Technorati Tags: Bernard Khoury , Lebanese Architecture, War Architecture, Modern Design