The project addresses the youth cultures of Naba’a, a popular low income neighborhood in Beirut.
It consists of a series of buildings that are designed with the intent of distracting the teenagers from a predominant drug addiction and shift their interest towards a healthier and more productive way of life involving sports and artistic creation. In order to achieve this goal, the users are provided with the adequate infrastructures to help them feel secluded and glorified at the same time. The project is as an exploration of how the interaction between the youth and the street gets materialized in architecture.

Drug Rehab Center -- Initial Sketches



Drug Rehab Center -- Daytime Drug Rehab Center -- Nighttime


The project splits into three parts scattered across the site:
• a drug rehab center for providing proper medical care and orientation.
• a skateboarding arena with the sole purpose of helping the youth find the maximum thrill in one of the most extreme sport activities instead of drugs.
• a housing section with modular units inserted into a standardized grid system with the goal of providing a temporary stay for the local users near the previous two buildings.


The second part of the project - the skateboarding arena - is basically a concrete structure that is exclusively dedicated to the young skaters of the neighborhood. The skateboarding arena is a landscape of concrete loops laid in rows and shifted from each other to create an enclosed space used for exhibitions, art studios / offices and workshops. The skating loops generate the form of the building and provide shelter to the spaces below.

Skateboarding Arena & Housing Units -- Aerial View Skateboarding Arena & Housing Units -- Street View


Drug Rehab Center -- Street View Drug Rehab Center -- Aerial View


Skateboarding Arena -- Initial Sketches Housing Units -- Initial Sketches
The third part of the project - the housing section - is a grid system of plugged-in auto-locking concrete capsules. These capsules are inserted into the grid on demand, creating an alternative life-style for the youth addicts, and allowing them to live together temporarily near the skating arena.

Drug Rehab Center -- Initial Sketches


American University of Beirut
Design Studio

2007
© 2023 Lemire Abdel Halim Chehab. All Rights Reserved.