A blast destroyed 40% of the city of Beirut on August 4, 2020. Five years after the port explosions, the UNESCO Director-General visited Lebanon to assess the institution's work in the capital city. UNESCO's efforts have been based on the recognition that the explosion destroyed numerous buildings and historic neighborhoods that were home to a community of cultural professionals, leaving a void in the city's cultural landscape and economy. The organization mobilized international efforts to restore, reactivate, and safeguard Beirut's heritage buildings, schools, museums, and cultural institutions, seeking to provide a comprehensive response to protect the city's cultural fabric. During the visit in September, new restoration and reconstruction programs were announced, including the rehabilitation of the Mar Mikhael train station and Beirut's Grand Theatre, as well as support for cultural industries in Tyre and Baalbek.

+ 6

This year, one of the winners of the Aga Khan Award was the Renovation of the Niemeyer Guest House by East Architecture Studio. The project is located on Tripoli’s outskirts in Lebanon, and it is part of the Rachid Karami International Fair (RKIF), an unfinished masterpiece by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. ArchDaily’s Managing Editor, Christele Harrouk had the chance to sit with Charles Kettaneh and Nicolas Fayad, founders of the East Architecture Studio, on-site in "the Niemeyer Guest House Renovation" project. Talking about modern heritage and the challenges of renovations, the architects opened the conversation about the role of architecture in building platforms for change.

+ 6

As cities grow in scale, dimensions, and amplitude, taking in 60% of the world population, the United Nations has designated the 31st of October as “World Cities Day”, an opportunity to talk furthermore about global urbanization, addressing challenges, encouraging opportunities across borders and highlighting responses. Focusing this edition on the theme of “Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience”, this day, part of Urban October, seeks to raise awareness about the climate crisis and its repercussions on the built environment.

Cities, at the center of the global challenges, are hubs for institutions, society, economy, commerce, and transportation. Understanding the importance of “Thinking the City”, we have compiled in this roundup, articles published by ArchDaily’s editors that offer planning tools and guidelines, tackle the different components of the urban realm and highlight worldwide as well as contextual questions and responses. 

For Design and the City's sixth episode - a podcast by reSITE on how to make cities more liveable, the team interviewed Christele Harrouk, Archdaily's Managing Editor and Salim Rouhana, Senior Urban Governance and Resilience Task Team Leader at the World Bank Group. The two Beirut natives talk about the devastating explosion in August last year and share their perspectives on what rebuilding the city could look like.

+ 18

"Public space" is a legal terminology that tackles the notion of land ownership, suggesting that this type of parcel does not belong to anyone in particular, but to the state itself. Open, free, accessible to all, and financed by public money, these spaces are not only the results of planning, but the consequences of the public practices they hold. Actually, people define how public space is used and what it means.

Protests - powerful political tools for change - from the March on Washington in 1963, the Arab Spring in the early 2000s to recent Black Lives Matter Movements, are altering the world. In times like these, while people still need to "take their issues to the streets" to be heard and seen, public spaces have resurfaced as a topic of discussion.

+ 11