People Places Moves Its Show To Fall

People Places poster

While streets in Beirut were suffering from gunfire and riots last May, students from the Department of Architecture and Design and the Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management were organizing an exhibit that was scheduled to open on May 19. Ironically, the exhibit, titled "People Places," which was meant to display student projects for upgrading the neighborhood surrounding AUB, was preceded and defeated by a city that was being subjected to "self-destruction." Sadly, the exhibit was postponed until October 20.

Sponsored by the AUB Neighborhood Initiative, the Office of Student Affairs, the Department of Architecture and Design, and the Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management, the exhibit will include projects from seven different design studio courses as well as three final year projects.

Cynthia Myntti, who is project leader of the AUB Neighborhood Initiative, put together People Places after expressing to President John Waterbury her astonishment at how creative students have been in their studio projects. Rana Hassan, graduate student in Urban Planning, is curator of the exhibit. She and Myntti explained that since the projects focus on creating a better neighborhood outside the AUB walls, it is important to get feedback from those that would be directly affected by the changes.

The projects vary in what they are proposing to do. One project offers a strategy for making the wall surrounding AUB on Bliss Street less intimidating and sealed off from the rest of the street. Another design offers a creative secondary use of parking lots in Hamra; for example, turning a parking lot into a space for cultural festivities and concerts in the evening when the lot has emptied. One student designed a new Assabil Library that is actually going to be realized in Sanayeh Park.

The exhibit will be a collaboration between students and faculty with the aim of facilitating communication with the general public through visual panels on each project. The students will be on hand to explain their designs come fall when People Places is rescheduled to open.