Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Marwan Ghandour
Based on studying postwar reconstruction urban projects in Lebanon, thispresentation argues that user participation in the production of the designproject is subject to highly contested political negotiation, which result inpolitical (and material) gains, mostly to actors external to the user community.This presentation will propose that civic engagement should be considereda creative process, addressed through the architect-citizen modelinstead of the intensity of user participation in the design process. Thearchitect-citizen, in that sense, is educated to constantly search for designtools and partnerships that allow her to integrate current and projected futureuser groups in the process of design.SOLIDERE, Wa‘d, and Nahr elBared Camp are three urban reconstructionprojects in Lebanon that targeted neighborhoods destroyed through armedconflict in the 1970-80’s, 2006 and 2007 respectively. Even though theseurban areas were produced over decades of multiple social interactions andeconomic considerations, the reconstruction projects regenerated the wholearea within contemporary political and social prerogatives, diminishing thediversity of actors and discourses in the process. SOLIDERE is the offspringof the neo-liberal government that took power in Lebanon in the early nineties,immediately after the end of the fifteen-year civil war. The projecttargeted historical downtown Beirut that included the historical markets ofBeirut in which all economical and confessional sectors of the Lebanesecommunities were represented. In an effort to lure global capital, the projecttriggered radical demographic change by transforming all property andentitlements in downtown Beirut into shares that constituted SOLIDERE,a privately owned real-estate company. Wa’d, on the other hand, is aboutdemographic stability. The main area of intervention of the Wa‘d projectis Haret Hreik, a dense residential neighborhood in the southern suburbsof Beirut. Making use of the political conditions of the civil war and itsaftermath, which displaced the pre-war landowners, a handful of developerstransformed Haret Hreik from a suburban neighborhood of Beirut in the seventiesto a very dense urban neighborhood with stringent spatial conditions.Hizbollah, the main opposition group to the government at that time, spearheadedthe project. The third site, Nahr elBared camp, is a neighborhoodthat originated as a semi-autonomous Palestinian refugee camp in 1949.At the time of initiation of the reconstruction project, the neighborhoodcommunity did not have a strong political representation, which allowed aninformally developed group of professionals to initiate a highly participatorydesign process for the demolished camp. The project was later adopted bythe United Nations organization UNRWA, the original caretaker of the camp.Each of these projects includes a complex network of actors and user groupsthat may have a claim to the space of the project. In an effort to articulatethe skill-set needed for the architect-citizen, this presentation will discussthe level of user participation in the design process in relationship to theresulting urban/social conditions that were/are being created in these threeurban sites.
Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa
ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1
