Many of you might know the Beirut City Center as the Dome, or the Bubble, or the Egg. The Beirut City Center is located at Martyr’s Square in Downtown Beirut and is a piece of art. The images I have uploaded on this post is what the structure looks like 40 years after it was built, including 15 years of civil war… keep in mind that it is located really close to where the Green Line used to be.
The building was designed in 1965 by Joseph Philippe Karam. It originally contained a movie theatre, which is the dome, an exhibition hall, and 6 underground levels for parking and shopping.
The reason I am writing this post now, is because I was just out with my parents and their friends. We were discussing Beirut prior civil war, actually they were reminiscing on the good old days. I asked them about this building since it always caught my eye. One of my dad’s friends told me that the technique used to build the dome was extraordinary for it’s time. He tried explaining to me something about how the shell was on a certain thickness and that it would usually be 5 times thicker or something of that sort. When I got home, I decided I would google it.
Unfortunately, there is not much information available about it. However, it has come to my attention from a bunch of online articles that the dome was going to be demolished back in 2003, but then they decided against it and got Bernard Khoury (architect of BO18, Yabani, Centrale, etc) to fix it up in 2004 and it was supposed to be completed by 2006. BUT I also read that in 2006 they decided to demolish it.
Does anyone know if they are keeping it or demolishing it? I checked Bernard Khoury’s website since I know he lists his projects there, and this project was aborted in 2004. You can take a look at how he had designed it here. The question remains, what is to be done with it?
