tutor | maroun daccache
ARCHITECTURE OF POST-CRISISES I EDUCATION & CULTURE
The definition and development of urban socio-culture, today, should be among the priorities of Lebanese municipalities. Although the need for an effective policy in this domain has been noted for several years, we are now faced with news concerns and new needs. There is a growing concern about the threat of cultural standardization brought forth by the effects of global-culture, and a new need to make concrete the desire to preserve and renew a culture and education identity.
We have entered into a turbulent period where the dizzying advances in information and communication technology, the growing trend of conglomerate mega-corporations and the domination of the free market in all aspects of commerce merge to bring about the weakening of national sovereignty, the domination of a single socio-cultural model and a single education infrastructure, as well as the relegation of certain cultures to a mere folkloric status.
The main objective of this difficult but necessary struggle is to liberate the broad range of cultural institutions from the negotiations focusing on the liberation of international commerce, and to emphasize that a “cultural product does not become a commodity”.
Even more so than in European societies, Lebanon feels pressured, even constrained by its unique situation and identity to conceive, define, and put into action a global policy of urban socio-culture.
Therefore, the aim of our research is to develop urban cultural-spaces network that implore new spaces for social and culture inclusion, in a variation of projects and topics in which the public activities become an essential part of the urban educational spaces; i.e. a new culture network that regenerate and revive the public spaces of our cities, similar to, for example, of the network of souks, commercial buildings, residential buildings and infrastructures.