Lebanon’s participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale is a unique opportunity to start a collective reflection process on the future of our country. How will we live together? Let us talk to one another, listen to one another, share our ideas, talk to the public, establish new lasting and physical protocols of exchange, understanding and responsibility.
We stand together gives a voice to the teams shortlisted by the jury of the Federation of Lebanese Engineers and Architects, through the proposals that they submit to this Open Call. Through their diverse compositions, approaches and intentions, our proposal for the Lebanese Pavilion highlights the urgent need to bring together multiple teams, multiple visions, around the general theme of the Biennale “How can we live together”, to build new relationships with one another and with the land.
Lebanon is an underlying potential, a particular case, yet not isolated. The largest western cities have gone through latency periods and the 20th century bears witness to that. It is vital for Lebanon to make use of its particular condition to propose solutions that are just as particular. It is our duty, as architects, to endeavor together to unveil unsuspected resources and narratives in our landscape, so that we may not only improve people’s lives, but also – and more importantly – aspire to amaze them.
The Lebanese Pavilion will fundamentally embody this collective search for complementary, mixed, or perhaps even contradictory fields of action, that deserve to be expressed, to contribute to a shared vision of the future.
We stand together to feed, expand and enrich our different approaches.
We stand together to better understand our specificities and thus, better value our assets.We stand together to establish the basis for a sustainable, fair, diverse and fulfilled social life, respectful of its heritage, both glorious and tormented, that made Lebanon a field of architectural exploration with exceptional potential.
We stand together to protect today’s heritage and assure tomorrow’s.
We stand together to collectively bear responsibility for future actions.
For the occasion of the Venice Biennale, the largest get-together in the world around architecture, with over 300,000 visitors per edition, only half of whom are architects, it is essential to propose a powerful pavilion not only by its overall design and scenography, but also by its easy content accessibility.
Our proposal for the Lebanese Pavilion is conceptually, spatially and technically simple. It showcases a place of gathering and expression, communication and exchange of visions, four or six in total, corresponding to the number of selected teams, in a place that inspires both union and openness.
Free of any obstacles, the Lebanese Pavilion is fully open to the public. An elliptic screen hovers like a luminous halo, contrasting with the imposing grandness of the hall, halfway between the floor and the ceiling. It covers the entire space of the Pavilion and transmits the visions of the different teams in the form of film reports.
Each team will be asked to develop its current proposal for the Open Call, to allow for a fifteen-minute story, filmed and edited by our team, to be screened in a loop on the large screen. This screen is slightly tilted towards the floor where several deckchairs and thin structures displaying the various content, are disseminated here and there, to ensure optimal viewing conditions.
This is how Lebanon’s participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale is expressed, through the fundamental desire to think and act together, to establish an interactive exchange platform in the name of public interest, with the similarities and the differences, of our expertise, awareness and commitment.
Maroun Lahoud - Nathalie Naufal
