SynErgy in the City
Hosted by ALBA University Beirut in collaboration with the Institute for Environmental Studies and Research [IESR] at LAU , Studio Beirut and Metropolicies.
“Guest teachers and lecturers (amongst many others): Lilet Breddels (Curator and tutor at KULeuven), Nabil Menhem (Urbanist and Architect, co-founder of MetroPolicies and tutor at ALBA), Rani Al Raji (Architect, Creative and DJ), David Aouad (Director Institute for Environmental Studies & Research, Professor at LAU’s School of Architecture and Design)”
Are there ways to organize infrastructural facilities on a neighborhood scale in times of cracking systems and institutions? Directly after the explosion in Beirut in August 2020, we saw an intense solidarity and community sense of the people of Lebanon to help each other from cleaning the rubble to fixing houses to providing food and water. Now that the dust has settled, Beirut and Lebanon are still dealing with huge problems in terms of energy supply, inflation, and lack of resources in general. One of the biggest problems is the lack of energy that literally puts the country on hold. Mobility is another challenge as fuel prices became unaffordable for the majority of people that, until recently, were still relying on private cars.
All over the world citizens experiment together with their (local) governments on how to renegotiate responsibilities, ownership, and maintenance of public services. This workshop is intended to be the kick-off of a larger and longer project in Lebanon to create a sustainable citizen-based network or infrastructure. The workshop will be partly hands-on, working on 1) creating an (electric) bike or foot-bike and 2) working on a low-tech energy device. Apart from the practical work, there will be talks, lectures, guests teachers and discussions on how a participative society works and what are the obstacles and challenges for enabling micro-scale governance structures and system change. Is bottom-up urbanism possible?
