The Image of Beirut as a Ruin: The Pictorial Image of Beirut Through its Artist Society

The research investigated the image of Beirut as a ruin through the pictorial artworks of Beiruti artists who have been through these conflict times starting from the 20th century, through a person who has no experience of the city. It concluded that Beirut's ruin image was created by its artist society in order to remind people what happened and is happening in the city. On the other hand, citizens of the city are constantly looking away and prefer not to remember on purpose. This is also one of the main reasons that the artworks (which are actually archival collections of historical documentations) are mostly exhibited in other countries. In this context, the project focuses on the notion of forgetting by proposing a program and architectural interventions in order to create situations for people to look away. The project follows a multidisciplinary approach by combining architectural design with art, history, politics, psychology and sociology. It investigates the different disciplines through literature reading and archival research and combines with architecture through drawing. Using architectural drawing as a main method of research and architectural design was also one of the main reasons to follow the B&T studio. Since drawing is a continuous act consisting of drawing and redrawing as also discussed in the theory paper, it has worked not only as a goal oriented approach but also revealed many aspects of the project in process.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science