Searching for margins of spontaneity

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Bassam Zeino, RMJM Office, Dubai.

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Zeino’s thesis focused on using metro systems to tap into Beirut’s places of spontaneous interaction.

RMJM's Bassam Zeino was born and raised in Lebanon. He served a year in the Lebanese military, studied architecture at the American University in Beirut from 1997-2002 and was a practicing architect at Beirut's NG Architecture from 2002-2006.

In 2006, Zeino won a Fulbright Scholarship from the US State Department and was granted admission to study architecture and urban planning at New York's Cornell University. He pursued his Masters degree because his professional life was getting in the way of his desire to fully explore his passion for intelligent, socially responsible urban design.

Returning to academics with four years of professional experience and without the "initial naïveté" so common of undergrad students, Zeino was drawn to the idea of mixing experimentation and research with the realism of the market. He was looking for something truly rewarding; he wanted to give hope to people who thought that the ambitions and aspirations of academics had no place in the market.

Zeino wanted to demonstrate that, in Beirut-despite its five-year cycles of unrest, trendy retail districts and "selective amnesia" about the past-spontaneous social interaction does exist and through it, the identity of the city endures.

In his Master's thesis, Portraits in a Mirror, Zeino identified those places in which spontaneous interaction still thrives in Beirut and explored the notion of connecting those spaces through a network. His hypothesis suggested that only within these places of spontaneity, or "portraits", could a true socially-inspired conversation about the identity of Beirut be initiated. The architecture component came from Zeino's reasoning that the cafés, museums and libraries of Beirut initiate and ultimately drive that discussion.

In this exclusive interview, Architect spoke to Bassam Zeino to talk about Iraq, skyscrapers and elephants in the room.

Tell us your story...

My name is Bassam Zeino; I grew up in Lebanon. I did my elementary, high school and university there. I served a year in the military and I worked as an architect at a practice called NG Architecture for four years. That was a reality check.

I learned a lot of market skills from that office, but at the same time, I always felt something was missing. I was doing my office work during the day and focusing on my own hobbies and interests at night. After a couple years of doing that, I was looking for ways to combine them to become one in the same. That's when I came up with the idea for the proposal I submitted to the Fulbright Scholarship Committee.

My return to academics was extremely refreshing, but because of my work experience, I was able to come back with a much more realistic look at the industry.

How did the Fulbright Committee respond to your proposal?

They really enjoyed it; they found it fascinating and realistic because it was a critical look at what Lebanon lacks and what it needs. That's when I was granted the scholarship. The Fulbright Committee forwarded my proposal to Cornell University and they were very interested as well. Between Fulbright and Cornell, 100% of my tuition fees were paid. I studied at Cornell from 2006-2008. Everything I saw and experienced contributed to my understanding of how the things I was learning could be applied to Beirut.

If you can, explain to me the social dynamics of Beirut?

If you want to explain Beirut to someone, it's very difficult to do it by writing or speaking. You have to show them mechanics. You have to show how things operate, how people interact and respond to each other and you've got to experience the politics on the ground. It's very complex for someone to understand when witnessing it from the outside. You need to break it down and show it in croppings of everyday life; these croppings also represent one's own perspective on what he or she is trying to accomplish.

In your opinion, is it possible to separate politics from architecture in the Middle East?

No. If we separate politics from architecture, we're ignoring a fundamental part of it. That can maybe happen in places where people feel they've figured out the issues and there are a lot of rules and regulations in place. In the Middle East, however, politics is always near the surface. You're always conscious of the play between architecture and society. The spaces in the buildings we build become symbols of our everyday life.

Your Masters thesis was a look at what is lacking in Lebanon. Can you expand on what you found?

I'm not necessarily interested in the politics of the country; I'm interested in how politics is translated into social and cultural patterns.

During my interview with the Fulbright Committee, I was talking with the cultural attaché and I said if [civil unrest] happened in the US, you'd see films, books and music about it. You'd see a whole translation into cultural production, which would mark the era with a certain identity.

We don't really have that in Lebanon because there isn't much self-reflection or criticism into what is really going on. People tend to turn a blind eye to history and current events because it's exhausting to try to find ways to talk about them.

There is no conclusion of what's right and what's wrong. There is a bit of selective amnesia. When that happens, any potential for creative production that might be specific to Lebanon disappears. That is where the identity of the country starts to erode.

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