Collective Valleys, Part 2
Reclaiming Bisri’s Common LandscapeLocation: Bisri, Lebanon
SMArchS Urbanism Thesis 20’, MIT 2020
Advisor: Rafi Segal
Readers: Rania Ghosn, Miho Mazereeuw
Through sectional studies, design strategies are proposed as a way to both protest the continuous threat on the landscape and offer a toolkit for action. This toolkit presents a set of interventions that allow for the activation and preservation of existing landscape ecologies and communities, amounting to a constant act of reclaiming and protecting the land. This project reimagines the landscape as a new hima, a locally rooted meaning for the commons. The proposed design operations aim to act as a prototype for collective actions of preservation and engagement, re-anchoring people with their landscape in the face of divisive projects.
Forests, agricultural fields, rocky slopes across the Bisri Valley
