Beirut's Black Parade Video - to My Chemical Romance

well, i must say, thx a lot 4 the compliments AND constructive criticism(however harsh some of it might be )

sorry for the somewhat late reply but i was on vacation so trying to cut down on laptop time (!)

Just a few clarifications, the movie is not the project itself, the movie is just an extra something I did to emphasize my vision, to spice things up a bit (not that they weren’t spicy enough ;> )

A lot of you say that it is quite ambivalent, the relation pro/anti Hizbollah, and that is exactly what I wanted, to create this confusion since my project is neither about being pro nor anti-Hizbollah.

Also you can’t blame me for making my project look hip!
It’s a skating park, how can I not make it look hip? :)
Besides, after all, I am also an architect trying to sell my project, should I make it look dull?
I am not a fan of serious feasibility reports and fake 3d renders trying to look realistic, ill have plenty of time to do that once I graduate, im still a student so I give myself the permission to dream and take my vision all the way!

For the video itself, I was originally planning to compare between a skaters’ show and the Hizbollah annual parade as a means to attract youngsters to the skating scene. So I did a brainstorming concerning this parade and the war(since the project is also about post-war reconstruction), and plugged in all my info on good old Google, and guess what I found:
Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, the lyrics to the song were the closest match to my Dahieh brainstorming session. :)
As both the project and video went along, the song and my concept became more and more intertwined, I used the lyrics to find new additions to my program and of course used my program to infuse images to the song’s lyrics (hence the skating images in the clip).
Concerning the project, its very easy to say that I chose a skating park because its cool, but fact of the matter is that it is really hard to integrate skating parameters in a residential area. You have to account for the safety of both the skater and the resident, study how a skater can interact with the sidewalk and road without hurting himself and others, find a way to plug in half pipes in the middle of a crowded city and find ways in which skating elements can be useful to other dwellers of the city....so it is more work than the video might suggest.

As for Sundance, well what I can I say, I wish!!
But lets face it its just a very modest montage...do u think they have a rookie award? ;>

Again, really glad u like it and thx 4 the feedback.

PS: SHE got an A.

Oh also!

For those who wanted a bit more info about the project itself, I wish I could upload some pics to tell you more about it, it would certainly be a lot easier, but I have a 9X3 m presentation and its really tricky to get smaller images since the whole thing is designed as a whole (not to talk about the huge file sizes, unless Mr. Fink ployd has any suggestions, im really not an internet whiz)

So, its a lot less interesting as a block of text but anyway here it goes.

The initial design brief was mainly about the Post-war Reconstruction of the DAHIEH quarters by means of imposing new zoning laws that helped push our ideas and defy the usual Beirut code of construction (which is already pretty outdated and redundant.) The brief also asked for the creation of a monument as a memorial for the last July war

i guess theres no need to say that it started with a complete rejection of all political affiliation; while a lot of other students were trying to either drown Dahieh in its own community, or impose new unthinkable programs to try to reconciliate dahieh with its surroundings, however eclectic the programs might have been, they all seemed to revolve between 2 main themes; pro-Hizballah(hence secluding Dahieh) or anti-Hizballah(integrating it).

And here is where the skating comes around. i was looking for a program which could free itself from all the controversy that was going on concerning the future of destroyed Dahieh and also a program that was lacking in Beirut and/or Lebanon (already social housing is out of the question since it implies major political involvment as is high rise and financial/touristic mass plans) after a lot of research it seemed that skating was the right choice. The ideology of skating is all about tresspassing and going beyond the borders of what is permitted, letting yourself indulge in the danger of the sport itself (if anyone’s interested check out Dogtown and Z-boys for an overview of the history of modern skating, Sony Pictures also turned the documentary into a movie called Lords of Dogtown).

Anyway, a bit more research led me to find out that there actually is a skating community in Lebanon, however small it might be (so my program actually has potential users!!). Some of them usually hang out in front of the Virgin Megastore (which is not an option anymore), others prefer the streets of Ain el Mreisseh along side the Corniche. Either way these young guys really don’t have a place they could call their own, Skateboarding is not exactly the national sport over here :p Also interestingly enough a bunch of them turned out to be from Dahieh itself.

Back to the project. The next step required to draft new zoning laws and a building code. Here also there was a lot of people coming up with new ways of erecting buildings and whatnot, and the only thing I could think of is damn it the people in Dahieh were perfectly happy to be living in normal buildings, they have a perfect communal activity and the last thing they need is to be told how and where they are allowed to live and work. For me it was neither about creating new forms nor about reshuffling the zoning of the area, but more about just adding that extra element that would attract the crowd I was looking for. I must stress on the word “attract”, I am not falsely inviting people to a totally different kind of life nor am I imposing a new obliterating activity, I am creating an element of curiosity that will attract one type of people only and that will not affect the overall character of the area(at least not on the short term)

My building code is basically the same old building code, apart the fact that I added what I call skating links: skating links have many typologies, they could be ramps, twisting walls, stairs, half pipes, pools, wedges, etc...most of them could double as public tools (ramps for disabled access, stairs for emergency exits, twisting walls becoming benches and bus stops...)

Each building should have a certain amount of skating links permitting skaters to pass from one building to another. That amount and placement of these skating links is fixed by the new zoning addition, which divides Dahieh into 6 distinctive zones from A(al mourabba3 al amni) to F (outskirts and surroundings of Dahieh). The density of the skating links increases as we go from zone F to A, where ultimately the quasi destroyed A quarters would be filled with skating links and the density would reach its maximum rendering mourabba3 al Amni as the new skating headquarters.
Buildings accommodating extra skating links would be rewarded with an increased FAR(that’s basically the allowable built area of the total plot).

Instead of erecting a monument, a system of “SCARS” was put in place(in relation to the lyrics of the song: “I’m not afraid, ‘I’m gonna show my scar). A half-pipe or pool would be built wherever a missile hit the ground. This scar should also be surrounded by a certain amount of green spac, large enough to make it more than a skating place and more of a public space, and also small enough not to seclude the half pipe from the rest of the streetscape.

All these elements would create skating moments in the heart of Dahieh, some might not succeed and be deserted and used as simple benches or parking spots, but from what I have seen and learned throughout my research, at least a couple are bound to succeed, and that is the essence of my idea; creating small moments destined to be discovered, without disturbing the whole; mixing two different ideologies without imposing one onto the other, but more like infusing, infiltrating in a very cunning yet obvious way. At the end, who know, they might turn out to like each other! :)