Design & The City - Beirut Design Week

Few cities inspire as much praise and as much criticism as Beirut. A site of endless beauty and possibility but also a place marked by its disappointments and failures, Beirut is nothing if not a contradiction. This year’s Beirut Design week (BDW) Roundtable Discussions will take Beirut’s many contradictions as serious points of inquiry. Looking at the many ways in which the city, through its services and its built environment, shapes our urban existence, we will ask how design might make Beirut a better, more welcoming place. Exploring topics as diverse as immigration, public services, and education, this year’s edition of BDW Roundtable Discussion asks not what the city is but rather what it could become.

This series is curated by the MENA Design Research Center.

Design For Arrival: refugees, Transitory Populations and Sanctuary Cities

Panelists: Daniel Kerber, Salwa Jabri, Elizabeth Saleh, Mona Fawaz

Cities are destinations. Since at least the 18th century, it has been nearly impossible to imagine the city without also considering urban migration as one of its central concerns. Internal displacement, industrialization, and subsequent wars have historically driven diverse populations into urban centers around the world, as they seek employment, sanctuary, and upward mobility. Today that pattern continues in greater force than ever. Statistics show that there are currently 65 million people who have been forced from their homes, and over one-third of them are considered refugees. Taking Beirut as a case study, in this panel, we will consider how design can help cities not just react to the crisis of immigration but instead prepare for the arrival of new city-dwellers. We will look at how refugees have been integrated into the city through formal structures and institutions, and propose ways in which new systems, products, and services might develop a culture of inclusivity, wherein refugees, immigrants, and transitory populations are not a burden but rather contribute to their own wellbeing and to the urban environments they inhabit. By addressing the central question of how we can design cities for the arrival of new populations, we will address larger concerns in design history and theory about cultural values, participatory methodologies, and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) infrastructures.