dpu Beirut summerLab: Riverside Ecologies and Contested Waterscapes

Limited places remain for the sixth year of the Development Planning Unit's summerLab series - a unique platform for one-week design workshops in contested spaces, with sessions geared toward professionals and students with an interest in studying the built environment and its contested narratives of transformation.

Organised in collaboration with Dalia Chabarek (Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts), the Beirut workshop focuses on the Beirut River that marks the edge of Municipal Beirut. It was once a prosperous river connecting the valleys of the country to the Mediterranean Sea, but its concretisation in 1968 left its waters scarce and converted it into an unintentional open-air sewage in the city. More recently, during the garbage crisis of Beirut, the river served as a temporary dump for the entire city. Along the edges of the Beirut River are culturally eclectic neighbourhoods, currently detached from the city and in dire need of upgrading.

The Beirut summerLab 2016 will question the influence of a potentially natural element on its immediate surroundings, and as an opportunity for the whole city.

Further links:

• Apply for the Beirut summerLab