Bit Téléférique by Dictaphone Group

Transcription

1 Bit Téléférique by Dictaphone Group Extract from research

2 Jounieh Jounieh's coast used to be well known for its beautiful, wide-open sandy beaches. Unfortunately, the beaches have not escaped the environmental degradation plaguing the rest of the country. More often overlooked is the destruction of the coastline by huge development projects, mostly in the form of resorts, exemplified by the urban sprawl that took place in Harissa, 500 meters above the sea. Most of these beach resorts turn their back to the beach because of pollution in the sea. They usually include their own swimming pools and paved decks; these are separated from the sandy beach by a wall of rocks that has buried part of the beach. Stairs may lead to the remaining sand for those willing to risk swimming in the sea. Most of these resorts also include a private jetty (marina, port) built of large pieces of rock quarried out of some unfortunate mountain. These jetties have chopped up the beaches into little private segments separated from each other by walls. Worse, they have wreaked the flow of currents in the sea and may have affected the deposition of sand on the beaches. The poet Lamartine once described the Bay of Jounieh, with its graceful curve of sand, as the most beautiful in the world. In the 1960's, the government built the port of Kaslik, which deformed the south end of the bay with large, angular jetties sticking out into the water. During the war, many private developments were built all along the bay, riddling it with private ports and blocking the view of the sea from the old main highway with big buildings. Historically, the coast road that came from Beirut widened into a new expressway that swept north toward Tripoli with exits along the way for a series of small, picturesque - and sometimes historic - towns and villages. Jounieh was the first of these old towns after Beirut. It was a village of small stone houses with traditional arched windows and red tile roofs opposite a soaring cliff 610 meters (2,000 feet) high with a great white statue on the summit- Lady of Lebanon - and, directly in front of it, a bay. During the occupation of the Ottoman Empire to Lebanon, between 1850 and 1910, the old city dwellings were built in an exceptional street formation. This street was composed of two parts called: El Mina el Atica (Old port) and El Mina el Jadida (New port).

3 Both areas converged in a central large construction: the Serail, the Regional Prefecture headquarters. El mina or port served as an important means of supply for the region. The old dwellings were constructed in an identical shape built with natural stone topped with red roof tiles. Their uniformity formed a typical two or three story unit blocks. Between 1962 and 1990, dozens of houses were destroyed and were replaced by new constructions non-compatible with the neighborhood. Jounieh's key attraction was its natural beauty, but astute entrepreneurs had added a telepherique, a one-and-a-half-kilometer (one mile) long cable car to the summit, and on a high bluff at the end of the bay, a complex of theaters and restaurants: the famous Casino du Liban, modeled, in every way, after the Folies Bergeres in Paris, and, in that early period, one of the highlights of virtually every tour of the country. In 1995, a ministerial decree classified the old district of Jounieh as a historic landmark. The decree number 8575 dated 3/8/2002 confirmed that a new zoning revision to be set by the Municiaplity of Jounieh and the Urban directory general claiming to the preservation of the historic coastal road. Today, the buildings are exploited by commercial stores and shops on the street level, while the upper levels are occupied by tenants and land owners. During the 50s/60s During the 50s and early 60s, the aerial photos show a predominance of agricultural production. Back then, there was the coast road that came from Beirut widened into a new expressway that swept north toward Tripoli with exits along the way for a series of small, picturesque - and sometimes historic - towns and villages. Jounieh was the first of these old towns after Beirut.

4 The way the area was built made a lot of sense in relation to the geography and natural landscape: looking at the 1950s aerial photo, we can see the bare mountain which people built on and the flat fields which people used to cultivate the land was somehow the turning point in the changes that proceeded. In the early 60s, the government built the port of Kaslik which deformed the south end of the bay of Jounieh with large, angular jetties sticking out into the water. Also, the first zoning and master plan to take place in Jounieh was in Before that, people built their own spaces based on informal social laws in which they respected each other s spaces. The 1962 law came to prove that the problem is not in the absence of law but in the law itself. The new master plan of the area introduced a big highway. It is during the 60s as well that the Casino was built modeled after a famous French building (Folies Bergeres). The highway, the zoning law, the Casino were all elements that show how the future of Jounieh was being drawn as a touristic capital-led one as opposed to the agricultural sea economy it had. The Highway The highway was planned in 1962 and executed during the late 60s. the highway cut Jounieh in two parts, with disregard to historical continuity: the area on the mountain and the area down the seafront. Area below the highway The sea are had been almost entirely privatized, and we can see that from the number of private jetties (also in comparison to Beirut). The area suddenly turned its back to the sea, and the long sandy public beaches disappeared. (Here we need more info about the a7zab because we know for sure that this was illegal) In 1995, a ministerial decree classified the old district of Jounieh as a historic landmark. The decree number 8575 dated 3/8/2002 confirmed that a new zoning revision to be set by the Municiaplity of Jounieh and the Urban directory general claiming to the preservation of the historic coastal road.

5 Today, the buildings are exploited by commercial stores and shops on the street level, while the upper levels are occupied by tenants and land owners. Area above the highway In 1962, the new zoning law allow for an exploitation factor of 80%, which is extremely high and which allowed for building on the mountain in high percentages. This law made the buildings eat up the green mountain. Until ironically one day the Speaker of the House Nabih Berri was disgusted with the sight of rock quarrying and other abuses of the Harissa Mountain above Jounieh as seen from Automobile Touring Club du Liban (ATCL) in Kaslik, where he had lunch. The head of the urban planning department, Saad Khaled, ordered all quarrying activities on the mountain be stopped. He ordered work to be stopped, and for a new study of the entire region be held to prevent further damage. The urbanization along the coast of Jounieh in relation to the edge The Physical Edge The edge has been physically altered. Such drastic transformation is seen nowhere else on the coast of Lebanon. Whereas the whole bay used to be strips of sand, it is now fragmented by the multiple spaces evolving within Jounieh s fabric. The urban social structure has overwhelmed the coastal dimension of the bay, wiping away the experience of the edge. The strip of sand used to be the extension of every house facing the coast. The edge s immensity, untouched triggered communal practices, gatherings. A huge powerful public space. It was open, exposed, an extension to each one s space, integrated in people s everyday life. Now, the charged social layers have secluded each and every user group, where each social class inhabit their own bubble around which they erected physical boundaries to preserve their program, intimacy, privacy. These compartments have erected walls all along the edge, alienating the coast from the urban fabric, the landscape from the built. Social Groups of the Edge

6 Along the coast, there are two types of users of space: residents and seasonal visitors. The residents comprise of shop owners and their families, foreign women working in prostitution, and fishermen. The seasonal visitors are hotel clients, private resort customers and the free-beach regulars. Each user group creates bubbles on the edge, delimiting areas, plots, spaces, breaking down the edge into parts. The diversity of the users affected physically the composition of the edge, by trigerring spatial boundaries reflecting the dissociation happening between the diverse inhabitants of this urban setting. Apart from the user groups, Jounieh can be categorized according to types of activities as well. - Production zone concentrated along the old souk: workshops, garages, wood shops, etc. Most of these activities are carried out by old people who have lived in the neighborhood their whole lives. - Commercial activity: retails, shops, restaurant, hotels, motel, pubs, clubs, etc. The concentration of commericial activity, full of signs and signals for buying, renting and consuming, bombard the user, fragment the space and dissolve the urban/coastal experience. It blurs the context and kills the edge. - Residential area: very few houses in the old souk are inhabited. They are either abandoned or gentirified by being turned into commercial shops. Most of the families who lived here (within a tight social network) are now dispersed either on the bottom of the mountain or on the steep slope. - Leisure activities: the 40 super nightclubs (sex industry) placed along the bay represent 7% of the tourist business in Lebanon, thus rooting its social consequences in the neighborhood s fabric. (need to write more here) These practices (super night clubs and foreign prostitutes living in hotels) have brought different users along the coast, transforming the spatiality of the bay. The whole sector has been marginalized, confined and reduced to a prostitution zone still largely regarded as a vice and a moral offense. As a result, all the unrelated structures that have been built around the sector along the edge have reinforced their

7 boundaries and clearly delimited their properties, thus reinforcing the compartmentalization of the edge. Ways in which the Edge has been transformed - On one extremity of the bay, large structures have expanded over the sea (ATCL, Bain Militaire, Marina). The Marina, this large scale intervention, isolates one part of the bay and compartmentalizes it. - Further on, there is the old souk (commercial units along the coast). It happens in a linear manner, parallel to the coast line, erecting a wall between the main flow and the shore. The sea alienated from the urban setting, the context, the passer. In all the activities that people undertake, the landscape is still inexistent. The edge is alienated and becomes a succession of left over spaces. - Later on, in the Maameltein area, resorts have appropriated the shore, surrounded by cafes, restaurants and night clubs. Manar, a private resort in Maameltein, targets a particular class of people. Memberships are inherited from one generation to another, within the high class society. As such, it building was designed in a way that completely isolates it from its surrounding. Walls have been raised all around the resort. The project is bounded and enclosed, creating an artificial edge that breaks down the coast s experience.