Given the global financial conditions, governments fail to sustain social stability within the cities. Sensitive social groups become marginalized and human rights fall down many levels within the political agenda. Specifically for Beirut, this studio seeks to find new models of coexistence and support between people within the city, a kind of symbiosis, through common spaces or buildings, from guerilla architecture to parasitical interventions.
Students created a sustainable social microsystem, and often a Utopia, that will act as a lighthouse / beacon within the city, provoking public interest on their issues. It is quite important to note here that in many cases, the selected social groups need temporary or semi-temporary accommodation and housing. Multiple project sites were proposed within and around the Gemmayze / Mar Mikhael areas.
Students developed their digital media skills as a design tool in the generation of a project, AND NOT just as a representational tool at the end of the design process. The design logic of transformations is actually the base of Generative digital design, used for the synthesis of multiple iterations / variations for the studio project. This kind of approach is about designing a system of interconnected elements, rather than designing an object. This approach can produce numerous different outcomes / proposals, out of which the designer chooses the one that best fits the brief. Students produced a number of possible variations, rather than a single design proposal. Generative Design is the base (or precedent) of parametric Computational Design.