Beirut, paesaggi in trasformazione tra globalizzazione e identità storica

Beirut, ancient stratified and multicultural crossroads, seems today a cosmopolitan city, open to global influences and oblivious to the past. Contrasting landscapes are juxtaposed: behind abandoned ruins of the civil war, glass skyscrapers of the new political and commercial center have canceled the historic landscape and the collective memory of the place. The building boom of recent decades is unprecedented, but there are no plans for new infrastructure or laws designed to protect the historic heritage. New social and physical spaces arise, without relationship with the existing context, with the culture of the place and nor with the real needs of its inhabitants; disputed places, fragmented by internal borders and by a succession of wars, theaters of all the contradictions of contemporary Arab society. Here, where any interaction with the past seems impossible, the research aims to investigate if Beirut could recover its historical identity, expressed in the landscape and representative of various ethnic, cultural and religious groups, integral parts of the place.