Update: House of Arts and Culture Beirut Competition

In April 2009, Bustler reported that Milan-based practice Teknoarch had won the international competition for the new House of Arts and Culture in Beirut, Lebanon. Representatives of Teknoarch are in Lebanon this week to meet with their local partners and to present the most recent developments of their project to the Minister of Culture.

The competition organizers also updated us that all entered projects have been uploaded and are now visible on their website http://www.darbayrut.org/.

These are the three competition-winning projects:
Winning project for the new Arts and Culture House in Beirut by Alberto Catalano
Catalano beat a large and competitive field of international firms, ateliers and individual architects with his design, earning a $75,000 prize and a commission for the project.

1st PRIZE: Teknoarch (Alberto Catalano, Giulia Iurcotta, Barbarangelo Licheri, Daniel Piludu, Celestine Sanna, Mariangela Murgia, Emanuela Forcolini, Souraya Frem), Milan, Italy

Funded by a $20 million gift from the Sultanate of Oman, the House of Arts and Culture will the first of its kind in Beirut. The expected completion date is early 2013.
The House has long been envisioned as an essential public space for the cultivation of Lebanon’s vibrant artistic community, which has, for over a century, been at the vanguard of regional artistic and cultural movements. And last week’s announcement was an important step toward the realization of the ambitious goal to revitalize Lebanon’s public endowment in the artistic sphere.Elevation North
Section
The competition’s second and third place prizes went to Beatriz Ramo Lopez de Angulo with STAR strategies+architecture from The Netherlands and Grigoryan Yury with Project Meganom from Russia.
Floor plan of the theaters
Floor plan of the exhibition area
Images: Alberto Catalano

2nd PRIZE: STAR strategies + architecture (Beatriz Ramo López de Angulo, Simone de Iacobis, Iñigo Paniego de la Cuesta, Jean-Vianney Deleersnyder), Rotterdam, The Netherlands3rd PRIZE: Project Meganom (Yuri Grigorian, Natalia Tatunashvili, Tatiana Kornienko, Yuri Kuznezov, Elena Uglovskaya, Irina Livieva, Artem Staborovskiy, Ruben Grigoryan), Moscow, Russia
Following are the eight honorable mentions:Honorable Mention: DORELL GHOTMEH TANE, Architects, Paris, France in collaboration with Joumana Al-Jabri, Dubai & Klaas De Rycke/BOLLINGIER + GROHMANN SARL, FranceHonorable Mention: Spiridon Kakavas, Dimitris Giannisis, Eleni Klonizaki, Kostanti Stamataki, Georgia Nikolakopoulou, Athens, GreeceHonorable Mention: poly.m.ur (Chris Yoo, Homin Kim, Heekyung Mun), London, UKHonorable Mention: Format 21, Frankfurt, GermanyHonorable Mention: Atelier 2/3/4, Paris FranceHonorable Mention: BOARD, Rotterdam, The NetherlandsHonorable Mention: INCH, Mexico City, Mexico & Madrid, SpainHonorable Mention: KAPUTT!, Lisbon, Portugal (see the entry in detail here)

Friday, April 03, 2009, Bustler posted the news of Italian architect Alberto Catalano of Teknoarch winning the international competition to design the new House of Arts and Culture in Beirut, Lebanon.
Here’s another very exciting entry for this international competition by Portuguese studio Kaputt! that was awarded an Honorable Mention. Kaputt! was founded in Lisbon in 2004 by eight young architects.

This is how the architects explain their project:
In its course and struggle to animate its great civilization, another step is taken: Beirut constructs its House of Arts and Culture. People from Beirut and the world will come to reflect upon and distance themselves from everyday life and, influenced by its extraordinary atmosphere, come together in the creation of art and culture. The House of Arts and Culture is a place of reunion and exchange. It is always free, open to all, yet shelters and protects. Like in the courtyard of a caravanserai, we will find a breathing inhabited space and through its transparency we feel its pulses. The exterior spaces, open to the outside, are both part of the city and the House itself. The House is designed with present technology but is independent of it, something bigger. Something adaptive. Change is its name. This is not an office building.

Conceptual Diagram
Diagrammatic Distribution of Program

URBAN AND ARCHITECTURAL OBJECTIVES:

The project is designed from a single volume, a shell that at first occupies all the plot´s surface. From this shell, mass is removed around two perpendicular axes, thus, creating a cross-shaped void. The center of this void and the inside of the shell are structured by copper blades, generating four exterior spaces in the interior of the plot. At the end of this operation, the surface at ground floor level of the project takes 70% of the plot. The affirmative presence of the shell allows for the planned integration of the building within the urban grid planned for the location. Through the vegetation of the exterior spaces, one can see the copper blades on the interior facades. It is the difference of character of these two components, the peripheral shell in white concrete, heavy and compact, and the thin blades of copper, light and permeable, that define the project´s intention. Through the blades, one can see the fluidity of people throughout the whole building. The chosen materials will age and create a patina without changing their character, thereby, preserving the character of the whole building over time.

Site PlanFirst Floor Plan
East Elevation
Longitudinal Section

PERFORMANCE AND CONFERENCE HALL:

For the main auditorium we propose a fully equipped proscenium stage; the small auditorium will have a black box character with a technical ceiling and movable seats to enable a vast choice of configurations; the projection room is prepared to serve the National Cinematheque. Theatre, dance, acoustic concerts and oratories are some of the most likely performances; Cinema projection, live concerts, congresses, conferences, seminars, etc. where electroacoustics will dominate the scene, are alternative activities for these spaces. Acoustics suited for live recordings and broadcasting connect it to the rest of the world. Large Performance and Conference Hall: Its shape can be read from the main exterior space through the copper blades. From the staircase it will be seen in all its amplitude. Here, one can understand that the acoustical shell is free of the covering roof. The Large Performance and Conference Hall aspires to be as encompassing as possible. The Hall´s layout consists of a series of fanned radial sections, centered on the stage, forming an ellipsoid in its entirety. Multipurpose usage for the Large Performance and Conference Hall as music and theatre require very different room acoustic properties (opposite material characteristics), raising the need to use interior variable acoustics. A box-in-a-box solution (double structure) must be applied to the main structural concept design at least for the performance halls and the movie theatre. These measures will isolate the buildings from external sources of vibration and noise.

Large Performance Hall Exhibition Spaces
Facade Detail

Images: Kaputt!

See the complete list of all entries here.