In this section of Design V, we explored how the built environment can enable and sustain social support systems by looking at physical infrastructures of care: community centers, childcare facilities, empowering facilities, formal and informal social spaces, essential public services, medical clinics, domestic structures, affordable markets, and other crucial resources to support urban life. We considered the collective equipment for living together as we believe that these seemingly banal forms of infrastructure deserve increased attention, not just to sustain us individually, but also to empower us to participate collectively in the building of a more resilient community.
The neighborhood of Abdel Wahab El Inglizi within the locality of Achrafieh constituted our area of study. We worked through three phases: in the first phase, we walked, mapped, and analyzed the setting along with identifying various potential sites of intervention. In phase two, students proposed a program of their choice along the shared program of a community center. They developed spatial proposals that captured the complex socio-economical, physical and architectural entanglements of their chosen site and its environs. By incorporating a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods, their proposals worked intimately with both human and material resources on site. Finally, students further developed their projects highlighting implicit relationships between architectural ‘styles’ (form, openings, materials), building technology (structural systems, construction techniques, materials, lighting, plumbing, heating, ventilation) and modes of living (social, cultural, geographical) focusing on the relation between the building envelope and the building type as part of an insertion in a specific physical and cultural setting.