Design Culture Day — Fall 2022

The School of Architecture and Design’s Foundation Program held its bi-annual Design Culture Day for the Fall 2022 semester on October 29th. The event involved eight different workshops each focusing on notions of placing-making, belonging, and inclusivity. The Gezairi Building, a recently inaugurated building on LAU’s Beirut campus housing the School of Architecture and Design, provided the setting and backdrop for the workshops. Lead by various mentors, the workshops engaged more than one hundred first-year students from programs in art, architecture, and design at LAU. Through the workshops the students considered their sense of belonging to the Gezairi Building as a new space.

Several of the workshops served as design interventions. For example, Elie Baroud mentored a group of students in the creation of a proposal to transform an unused area, the sidewalk outside the building, into a functional, inclusive, and lively space. On the other hand, Elie Mouhanna guided students in making renovations to the student lounge. George Hanna worked with students in proposing plans to improve building’s cafeteria while, students in Cedric Jacquemyn’s workshop examined the design possibilities of the building’s rooftop, a space that was still incomplete.

However, not all the workshops intervened on specific spaces. For instance, Mabelle Sawan’s workshop addressed the building more comprehensively through environmental graphic design and wayfinding. Mayda Freije’s workshop “If Vision Was Not an Option” took a different approach as students were guided through a series of exercises that considered the perceptions of visually impaired individuals. Lastly, Carla Hage and Melissa Plourde Khoury worked with a group of students to collectively write a manifesto representing their expectations of the Gezairi Building. Click here to read the Manifesto