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Digital tools will have to be used in order to experiment with hybrid programmatic connections and transitions as well as tectonics and structure beyond Le Corbusier's DOM-INO model. Students are expected to analyze these typologies with drawings, photographs and sketches in their site analysis as well as the city fabric typologies.Īt the same time, students will develop skills in using digital media as a design tool in the generation of a project, and not just as a representational tool at the end of the design process. From dwellings dating back to the Ottoman Empire, to Bauhaus influenced concrete buildings of the 1920's and contemporary high end residential towers. Almost all of Beirut's building typologies can be found here. Like Gemmayze, Mar Mikhael is characterised by a very dense and diverse city grid. The site is located between Madrid street, Pharoun street and the Coast highway. This “Urban Hub” will have to promote sustainable, architecturally designed growth for the whole area, instead of the current arbitrary and ephemeral condition. Their final design will have to host diverse target groups that actually use it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They will have to propose a hybrid space: a mix of public and private spaces in a currently empty lot, that will be able to sustain today’ s gentrification of the area, while respecting the existing resident’s needs. Students will have to answer the before mentioned problems, by their design strategy / proposal. The scope of this studio is to design an “Urban Hub” in Mar Mikhael that will be able to sparkle viable growth. Still, bars and restaurants in Gemmayze are now closing one after another, revealing a quite uncertain future for the area. Apparently Gemmayze followed the Hamra area in this urban gentrification whirlpool, a phenomenon in Beirut that seems to take place arbitrarily. Mar Mikhael is following the rapid (yet ephemeral) change of Gemmayze, from a mainly local low income residents area, to a nightlife adventure land and ex patriots bee hive. The studio will focus in the Mar Mikhael area of downtown Beirut, Lebanon, explore and analyze its current urban conditions, speculate on the future dynamic of the area, and finally propose an architectural synthesis that comes to solve some of todays and possible future issues.