Hiba Sinno, Office of Communications, communications@aub.edu.lb
A city is often understood through the places where it meets the world. It is the flow of people, goods, cultures, and ideas through these spaces that shape its character and its place in the region. In Beirut, that meeting point has long been the port—a threshold of movement, exchange, and identity. Beirut al-Marfa', now on view at the Beit Beirut Urban Observatory, invites visitors to reconsider this relationship and reflect on how the port and the city have shaped one another across time.
The Beit Beirut Urban Observatory is a collective space that brings together cultural actors working across architecture, urban design, planning and landscape design, to reflect research and engage the public on the future of our cities through exhibitions, discussions and public programming. Among its founding members are the AUB Neighborhood Initiative and the Arab Center for Architecture. The mission of the Observatory is grounded in three collective actions the founders believe must guide urban work in Lebanon today: preserve, repair, share. Urgent questions are raised to invite debate: How do we activate public space? Who has access to housing, mobility, and green and shared areas? What does it take to make a city livable for everyone?
The exhibition opened on November 5 at Beit Beirut, drawing more than 400 attendees, including Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, ministers, municipal officials, members of the Beirut Port Board, and figures from Lebanon's cultural and academic communities. The gathering reaffirmed Beit Beirut's role as a civic space for public dialogue about memory, heritage, and urban futures.
Produced by Hkeeli and curated by Hala Younes, Hadi Mroue, and Mona El Hallak, director of AUB's Neighborhood Initiative, the exhibition was made possible with the support of the Directorate General of Antiquities at the Ministry of Culture and the Bibliothèque Orientale at Saint Joseph University of Beirut.
“The aim of this exhibition is to explore Beirut's relationship with its port—a relationship that is historically inseparable," Younes says. “Beirut was a port before it became a city." She explains that the exhibition begins with a historical timeline tracing how the port's development shaped the emergence of modern Beirut, with key moments unfolding in Karantina, Charles Helou, the First Basin, and along the waterfront. “This historical moment will not return," she adds. “We lived through August 4—and Beirut and its port lived through it as well."
The August 4, 2020 explosion is present throughout the exhibition—not as a singular tragedy, but as a rupture that exposed deeper questions about governance, accountability, and collective memory. A text by writer Elias Khoury, featured in the exhibition as a touching voiceover by El Hallak, reflects on Beirut as a “shattered mirror," evoking the disorientation of a city forced to confront loss while searching for ways to move forward.
Yet Beirut al-Marfa' is not only about memory. It examines how the port might be rebuilt, and what that reconstruction means for Beirut's identity and public life. Visitors encounter the different proposals developed for the port's recovery—each tied to a different vision of Lebanon's economic and geopolitical future. “Every study must clearly state who commissioned it, which ministry, who developed it, and who funded it," Younes notes. “A decision must be made—but most importantly, the public must be involved. If no regulatory authority is created, if no law governs the port, nothing will move forward."
El Hallak emphasizes Beit Beirut's significance as one of the major cultural spaces in Beirut under public ownership. “This is a place where we can speak about the city—its past and its future," she says, addressing the prime minister and cabinet members present. “We are working, and we don't want anything—just your moral support. Because what is happening here is about Beirut, all of Beirut."
Moving between archival material, urban research, testimonies, proposals, and personal reflection, Beirut al-Marfa' invites visitors to consider how rebuilding infrastructure also requires repairing trust, public life, and the city's capacity to imagine its future.
The exhibition is open at Beit Beirut (Sodeco intersection), Wednesday to Sunday, 12:00–8:00 pm, until February 8, 2026.