THE INHABITED BRIDGE

Beirut, Lebanon

Concept. A bridge of rooms between two streets, and an observatory over the city.

Views

The bridge in its Beirut context, a sandstone facade of scattered openings cut open to show the rooms inside

A double height room inside the bridge, timber screens filtering the western light over the city

Drawings

Hand drawn ink axonometric of the skins, with the vanishing sequence and the yellow line of the route — The skins, drawn by hand. What vanishes, and what remains.

Graphite axonometric of the stacked dwellings, mass, void and shadow

Plan of the bridge stepping across the terraced site between the two streets — The bridge steps between the two streets, across the terraces.

Roof plan, the rhythm of skylights over the rooms

The four unit types drawn as four posters — Four rooms, four postures. The units as posters.

Section through the bridge and the terraces

Project Brief

Two congested streets on two levels, and between them a lot of empty terraces. To pass from one street to the other, Beirut makes you walk the long way around. The proposal is a bridge you can live in. It steps down across the terraces from one street to the other, and inside it are rooms for students, a few minutes from AUB, LAU and the life of Hamra.

The facade is built the way Beirut ages. Sandstone pixels gather and thin out along the length of the bridge, hiding some rooms and revealing others, the way the city’s old facades deteriorate and still stand in beauty. The building celebrates that erosion instead of repairing it. Above everything runs a public observatory, a long platform where the city can climb over itself and look at its own history.

A concept by Pierre Zebouni. Design, drawings and visualisation by Pierre Zebouni. Beirut, Lebanon.

All work