Students: Ludovic Toffel, Alain Vimercati
Location: Beirut
Date: October, 2009
Type: Research project, student work

Background
The end of the Ottoman Empire was announced on July 24, 1923. It had previously already been defeated militarily, had declared financial bankruptcy and was at the mercy of England, France, Germany and Russia, its main creditors. Already during World War I, secret negotiations between France and British powers took place, dividing the Middle Eastern regions of the ailing empire into respective zones of influence, resulting in the formalized “Sykes-Picot Agreement”. Today’s Israel was initially placed under international control, whereas Jordan and parts of today’s Saudi Arabia was under “British Influence”, and contemporary Iraq, Kuwait and the Emirates formed the zone of “Direct British Control”. Inland Syria and other parts of Iraq were defined as the zone of “French Influence” and parts of Turkey, coastal Syria and all of today’s Lebanon were declared as zones of “Direct French Control”.

Themes
The French had shared close ties to the Lebanese since the beginning of the 20th century. During the time of French influence Beirut transformed fundamentally on a cultural, urbanistic and architectural level, as well as in the sense of a general lifestyle. Repeating a quasi Haussmannian intervention, the city center was virtually reconstructed from scratch, by implanting an ‘Etoile’ where previously there had been souks. A new architectural language expressed itself visibly, merging ‘oriental’ elements with contemporary western styles and modern construction techniques. New institutions of education, health and culture were built within the city fabric, and the city itself expanded rapidly to the east and the west, developing the areas around Achrafieh and Ras Beirut into elegant suburbs. But together with all of the physical transformation, a ‘French savoir vivre’ gained influence amongst large parts of the population that was to leave an imprint of the city for the decades to come, well into the time of independence. Beirut had gained its image of the ‘Paris of the East’.

Project
What is the urban idea of the ‘French Mandate City’? Did the idea last beyond the official rule of the French in Lebanon? Is it possible to trace developments of the 50s and 60s back to the French rule? How did the ‘generic’ (?) model of French urbanism and French architecture merge with local tradition? What is the difference between French planning strategies and their outcome in Beirut compared to Damascus? How do classical elements of ‘colonial urbanism’ such as segregation of population groups, elements of representation, and control and supervision feature in Beirut?