Spaces of Negotiation
'Spaces of Negotiation' is a thesis that looked at the walled city of Sidon, Lebanon, as a site for growth using tools of programmatic and spatial negotiation.
Sidon, a small ancient walled city on the Mediterranean coast of about 3 sq miles, has undergone a multitude of cultural influences and has always seen an expansion of population. At its current condition, the old city has about 80,000 inhabitants and is still growing due to influx of refugees. As a result, space is the main negotiator, making it the perfect site study for an urban design strategy of growth that simultaneously acts on the scale of the building and the city.
Thesis advisers, Nathaly Gattegno and Christopher Falliers;
Fall 2012 / Spring 2013. California College of the Arts
Party walls in the old city grew from thick stone walls to the contemporary thinner concrete wall. The proposed imagined shared spaces out of a steel structure framework that embeds in the existing walls as part of a cause and effect system to always maintain light and space;
Religious and programmatic growth of the walled city of Sidon happened throughout historical invasions between 13th and 18th century.
The city walls were altered with each invasion, some ruptured with the introduction of highways on the periphery or sometimes diminished to become part of a building.
Using private courtyards to launch a new pedestrian roofscape.
