The Beirut Project is an open-ended initiative that reimagines the city of Beirut beyond its long-standing narrative of conflict by envisioning alternative versions of the city existing in parallel realities and speculative futures. Derived from my MFA thesis in the Interdisciplinary Master's in Art, Media, and Design (IAMD) program, presented at OCAD University in April 2024, this project invites viewers to perceive Beirut from new and unexpected perspectives.
Adopting a geocritical approach, the project incorporates frameworks of spatiotemporality, transgressivity, and referentiality, along with phenomenology and Foucault’s notion of heterotopia. It explores how familiar spaces of the city can be experienced as unfamiliar and new, allowing residents to envision and live in multiple, coexisting realities within Beirut.
Through fragmented and multifocal architectures, The Beirut Project fosters creative uncertainty and imagination, providing a space for collective dreaming and reimagining, and offering a transformative vision for the future of Beirut and its inhabitants. This initiative is conceived as a collaborative and multidisciplinary endeavour, open to partnerships with friends, allies, and the wider community.