The Lebanese Edge
Coastlines 03
Architectural Association
Landscape Urbanism
London, United Kingdom, 2003-2004
Director: Ciro Najle
Professors: Ciro Najle, Eduardo Rico, Chris Fannin
Lecturers and Collaborators: Sandra Morris, Larry Barth, Ian Carradice, José Arnaud Bello, Marco Poletto
Students: Feng Chen, Weiying Chen, C.C. Chiang, Sophia Papadopoulou, Iván Valdez Torrico, Wenshin Wang, Chia-Hua Wu, Shu Yuan Wu
Landscape Urbanism constitutes a collective endeavour to construct a new model of practice where the techniques and modes of operation historically described as landscape design can be integrated within the domain of urbanism. The landscape offers the double opportunity to reframe urban problems and to recontextualize the practice in general. It introduces a context of immensity, a context of complexification, a context of time, a context of vitality with a life of its own, and a virtual context, simultaneously pre-existent and co-existent with actual urban conditions unfolding. These contexts open the conditions for a shift in the understanding of urban developments.
Third research in the Coastlines series, The Lebanese Edge explores the potentials and limitations of the development of coastal regions in the eastern Mediterranean coast, along the segment where Mount Lebanon arrives to the sea, a narrow band of urbanization under heavy environmental stress and where seventy-five percent of the Lebanese population is currently accommodated.
