Tag Archives | buildings

A new Solidere in the making?

Adjacent to downtown Beirut is a small area called “Khanda2 el Ghami2”, and if you happened to pass by it someday, you can’t but notice the many abandoned buildings there. Once street in fact, the Tayyan street which is pretty close to Beirut Digital District, looks deserted with many vacant buildings. And what’s weirder is that there isn’t a single construction site there even though we all know there’s always a high demand for Land in Beirut.

beirut

Upon asking around a bit, one trusted source told me there’s a real estate company that is slowly purchasing every single building in Khanda2 el Ghami2 (the area enclosed in red), and have so far purchased many of the buildings you see in the picture above, in order to later demolish them all and reconstruct the whole area to make way for commercial spaces, residential towers, etc… and thus making it quite similar to what Solidere looks like.

Not that I oppose the idea, since the company isn’t doing anything illegal and is actually offering good money to the owners, but if would be interesting to learn more about this project. So if you have any information about it, please do share it in the comments.

khanda2 el ghami2

8

On Fouad Boutros highway

fouad boutros highway

According to an article on Now Lebanon and another on Beirut Report, it seems like the post I wrote back in March on the new highway in Achrafieh connecting Hazmieh to Charles Helou is true, since the project has already been given a green light and works might start in a month or so.

And ever since the news was spread, “Save Beirut Heritage” has been opposing the project as it requires destroying 28 old buildings. But how true is that?

fouad boutros highway 1

I mean let’s assume each building has only 3 to 4 families living in it, then the government should currently be in the process of buying a minimum of 90 apartments in order to later destroy them and be able to go forward with the project. But 90 isn’t a small number, that’s 90 families who can easily coordinate a protest or at least appear on TV to oppose being evacuated from their apartments, which is not the case right now.

That means the number of buildings is either much lower than 28, and therefore a large chunk of the highway will be underground, or the government is offering a really large sum of money for the families and they’re simply happy with it.

fouad boutros highway 2

And let’s be real for a moment, the highway might be seriously endangering Beirut’s heritage, but old buildings in the areas of Achrafieh and Mar Mkhayel are rapidly disappearing anyway to make way for high rise towers! So are we over-reacting a little bit here..?

Anyway, I personally don’t really see the need to connect Charles Helou with Hazmieh through a highway passing by Achrafieh, since there’s already another highway connecting Hazmieh to Karantina which is pretty close to Charles Helou!

5

Destroying Beirut’s architectural heritage

I saw this caricature by Armand Homsi in Annahar Newpaper on Sunday April 18th.

Illustrating what is happening in Beirut and various areas of Lebanon, this caricature is worth a thousand words. We don’t need skyscrapers with apartments that we cannot afford, just keep our beautiful Beirut as it is!

Annahar April 18 2010 - Arman Homsi

3

Virgin & UFA buildings in Beirut

Expecting some elections billboards? Sorry to disappoint you, today I’m sharing with you 2 photos I have taken in downtown Beirut showing Virgin and UFA buildings in the martyr’s square.

ufa_small virgin_small

Eikhir injeizeiteh!

1

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes