| Beit Beirut | |
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Beit Beirut before its renovation |
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Location within Beirut
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| Location | Beirut, Lebanon |
| Website | http://beitbeirut.org/ |
Beit Beirut (Arabic: بيت بيروت ; literally "the house of Beirut") is a new museum and urban cultural center which is prospected to open in 2013 in Beirut's Ashrafieh neighborhood. The cultural center will be housed in the restored Barakat building, also known as the "Yellow house", a historic landmark designed by Youssef Aftimus.
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The Barakat house, commissioned by Nicholas and Victoria Barakat, was designed and built in 1924 by Lebanese architect Youssef Aftimus, the architect who created Beirut's city hall. In 1932 two more stories were added by architect Fouad Kozah, giving the building its current form.[1][2][3]
Middle class families lived in the building's eight spacious apartments until the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, when Christian militiamen moved in. The Barakat building became a vantage point for sniping and a combat zone to ensure the control of the Sodeco crossroad because of its airy architecture and due to its location on the demarcation line that separated the warring factions.[2][4]
The civil war devastated the Barakat building and neglect took its toll on the structure, which became the scene of repetitive acts of vandalism; it was sentenced for demolition in 1997 when the owners decided to sell the property. It was saved by Lebanese heritage activists, particularly architect Mona Hallak who first investigated the house in 1994 during one of her visits with the "Association pour la Protection des Sites et Anciennes Demeures au Liban" (APSAD), an independent organisation for the protection of historic monuments and buildings. Activists had articles about the structure published in the press almost on a daily basis, wrote petitions, and organized rallies in front of the building. Protestations finally led to the suspension of the decision to destroy the building. In 2003 the municipality of Beirut issued a decree of expropriation for public interest. The decree stated that the Barakat building will be restored to accommodate a memory museum and a cultural center (which will later be known as "Beit Beirut") with objects tracing the 7000-year history of the city. The decree also provisions the construction of a modern annex to the building on the empty lot around it, which will house offices of the municipality's urban planning department as well as an underground parking lot. The French government offered the Beirut municipality technical assistance with developing the building into a museum, but the team of cultural experts who were supposed to visit and advise on its development were delayed in 2006 and again in 2007 because of the political situation in Lebanon.The Beit Beirut project was delayed until the return of relative political stability in 2008. The project saw the collaboration between the municipality of Beirut, the City of Paris and the French embassy in Lebanon.[1][2][3][5][6][7][8] In 2009, Lebanese architect Youssef Haider was commissioned by the Beirut municipality to lead the building's restoration works. Even though Haidar had experience in rehabilitation as he had previously worked on the restoration of traditional buildings in downtown Beirut and Tripoli, his selection was contested since he was chosen without having recourse to an open competition. Haidar was assisted by a committee of architects formed by the Municipality of Paris; this committee has worked to develop the rehabilitation project of the museum and is formed by members from a variety of disciplines.[nb 1][9]
The Barakat building is built in the Ottoman revivalist style with ochre colored Deir el Qamar limestone which gave the building its name.[2][9] The building consists of two four-story high-end residential blocks in addition to a roof terrace. The two blocks' facades are joined together by an open colonnade adorned with wrought iron work. The blocks are separated by a central atrium connecting to the main entrance to the landscaped garden in the backyard and to the buildings' staircases.[2] The Barakat building is located on what used to be the tramway station on Damascus road.[10]
During the reconstruction phase that followed the Lebanese civil war, many important buildings were demolished. Activists were able to save a number of individual structures. One of the most important of these buildings is the Barakat building. In addition to its architectural and aesthetic values, the Barakat building’s iconic crumbling colonnade and bullet-peppered facade had become some of the most powerful symbols of the civil war in Beirut. Sociologists and historians have observed that many Lebanese have a tendency to try to leave the war behind them and simply move on with their lives. The fact that high school history textbooks still fail to address the civil war and stop with the withdrawal of French colonial forces from Lebanon in 1946 is just one example of how greater Lebanese society has tried to forget the past. Intellectuals however, including the architects behind the campaign to save the Barakat building, have argued that Lebanon cannot move forward from the civil war until it creates a “collective memory” and then uses that unified account of civil war events to heal some of the divisions fracturing society. In 2007, then Beirut's mayor Abdel Menem al-Aris affirmed that the prospected memory museum will show the entire city’s human history, including the civil war.[3][8][11] Although much of the exterior was renovated, the ground and first floors of the Barakat building's ruined facade were preserved in disrepair, to serve as a reminder of the darker chapters of Beirut’s history. Bullet holes and sniper barricades were kept in their original places as well as the belongings of Fouad Chemali, a local dentist who occupied an apartment in the building's first floor since 1943.[nb 2] The Beit Beirut second floor functions as a permanent exhibition which recounts the history of Beirut from the nineteenth century onward. The exhibition includes documents, records and the municipality's archive which was made accessible to the public. The upper floors were renovated to house a multifunctional hall for temporary cultural, artistic and musical events.[9]
Initially known as Barakat building, the structure was dubbed the Yellow house due to the yellow ochre color of the sandstone.[1][7] The name of the building changed with the alteration of its function; it was called the building of death during the civil war.[12] The cultural center hosted in the building was first called "Museum of memory" and "Beit al Madina" (the house of the city) before settling for "Beit Beirut" (the house of Beirut).[1][7]