We redesigned Beirut Park because this city deserves a public place that remembers what it keeps erasing.
When we sat down to redesign Beirut Park, I wanted to start with a blunt question: what is a park for? Beirut already has enough places that push people along. A park should let you arrive. It should give you somewhere to sit, look up, argue over a game, mourn somebody, or waste an afternoon without buying anything.
The plan we studied had open ground, trees and a route around the site. Those mattered. But its sweeping lines kept pulling you forward. Its abstract forms could have landed in almost any coastal city. I could see a polished rendering. I could not yet feel Beirut.
Before the civil war, downtown was a dense place of souks, offices, worship, cafés, shortcuts and arguments. The war tore it apart. Reconstruction then cleared and remade much of what remained. Old streets and buildings disappeared; ancient layers were exposed, removed, saved selectively or turned into fragments of a new image. We lost more than attractive facades. We lost evidence of how people had lived together, badly and beautifully, in the same city.
Beirut has become very good at calling erasure progress. We destroy, tidy up the drawing and act as though memory is an obstacle to modern life. Some people call that fashionable. I think it is lazy. A new city needs somewhere to stand, and a blank surface cannot tell you where you are.
That was the problem I saw in the original park scheme. Its curves and managed water feature looked elegant from above. On the ground, I feared another landscape that would move people through without asking them to stay. In the middle of a rebuilt centre already accused of forgetting, a generic park would repeat the same mistake at a smaller scale.
We kept the outer circulation ring and the main routes. People still need to cross the park easily. Inside that ring, we drew clearer sightlines and a sequence of places to pause: a gate, a sheltered pavilion, a plaza, a gazebo, a tower, groves and tables. In a city like Beirut, a straight line can be an act of mercy. It gives you a bearing and the freedom to step off it.
At the entrance, we proposed a sandstone gate with capitals drawn from the Proto-Aeolic tradition of the Levant. It would lead toward a pavilion with triple arches, a planted court and a fountain. The point was not to reproduce one pure historical style. Lebanon has never been one style. We wanted the first steps into the park to make that layered identity visible.
The paths would feel different underfoot. Crushed limestone has texture and sound; it asks you to slow down. Trees from different Lebanese landscapes would bring more than a generic green canopy. We imagined a place where seasons, shade, flowering and fruit help people notice time passing. The exact species, accessible path surfaces, drainage and water needs would still require proper site design.
These are drawings for a park we proposed, not photographs of a park that has been built. Move the line across the plans below and open any numbered place. You can see what we kept, what we changed and where the argument meets the ground.
Drag across the plans, then open a numbered place. We kept the route around the park and gave its interior reasons to stop.
Use the slider or arrow keys. Our proposed plan appears on the left; the earlier plan is on the right. These drawings do not show a completed park.
Open any image to read the design and move through its views.
In the centre, we imagined a column that would do more than stand as a ruin. Brass markings in the limestone could turn its shadow into a public sundial. A real instrument would need precise alignment, and any ancient column would require conservation approval. But the idea is simple: give a piece of history a job in the present.
From that plaza, the view would run to a gazebo beside the lake and then to the Pigeon Tower above the trees. The gazebo takes its cue from Beirut's lost kiosks. We wanted it to be a public stage for a hakawati, a small concert, or nothing at all beyond watching the light move across the water. A view once reserved for palaces should belong to anyone who walks in.
The tower is probably the clearest statement of what we were trying to do. Pigeon keeping, kash hamam, is part of Beirut's rooftop life, yet it is rarely treated as heritage. We drew a cathedral for it. The tower could house birds, return collected droppings to the gardens and, at sunset, make their release a moment when strangers look up together. The bird care and that daily ritual would need people, money and testing. A rendering alone cannot make them real.
History in this park would not belong only to stone. In the Adonis Grove, we imagined red spring flowers as a place to remember Lebanon's dead without placing one faction's hero above everybody else. The old story of Adonis gave us a language for loss and return; it does not prove an unbroken ritual from antiquity to today. The planting itself needs a botanical decision too: the source study names both anemones and Adonis aestivalis, which are different flowers.
We gave everyday pleasures the same seriousness. The Park Café gathers Gothic, Classical, Mamluk and Beiteddine references around a shaded place to talk. The Leisure Nook borrows from older Beiruti domestic forms and sets stone tawleh tables outside. I wanted the sound of dice, laughter and disagreement to count as part of the park's architecture. A student and a retiree might meet across a board. Nobody should have to order coffee to use the public tables.
The pergola carries the same idea into the shade. Vines could climb a colonnade, joining the city's archaeological imagination to its farming traditions. Reusing original Roman columns would depend on an inventory and permission; the drawing does not grant either. Even if that material could not be used, a shaded walk and the question behind it would remain.
We wanted local stone that could weather, planting that could change with the seasons, and structures people could use instead of only photograph. That ambition comes with ordinary obligations: accessible routes, horticulture, water, maintenance, bird care, conservation and a budget. No material is magically permanent. No tree survives because it looks convincing in a render.
I do not think a park can settle Beirut's arguments. It can make room for people to have them in public, beside things they recognize and things they may contest. New traditions are not declared into existence by designers. They take shape when people return, use a place, change it and decide it matters.
This park was our love letter to Beirut. We wanted to show that our identity is not a problem to erase whenever a new style becomes fashionable. It is the most valuable material we have.