SDC Lecture | Bernard Khoury: Toxic Grounds
About the event
The SDC Lecture Committee is privileged to invite you to “Toxic Grounds,” an in-person lecture, by Bernard Khoury.
My city is bleeding, contaminating the Mediterranean basin with its toxic fluids. Today, more than ever, its deeply scarred fabric is in desperate need for assistance. As a practitioner, I have been drawn to problematic territories. Most of the grounds I have operated on were either highly sensitive zones, cities undergoing convalescence or regions in which the state and its institutions have failed to regulate or control the growth of the urban tissue. Beirut is a striking example that I often call “a wonderful catastrophe”, a city that, over the last few decades, witnessed a rapid and chaotic development. In the absence of federating and consensual political projects, our neighborhoods are shaped by individualistic and distinct gestures that do not compose with each other. These are often driven by defensive postures that are the result of the inability to predict the future of the surrounding context and the danger of what can be coming right around the corner. In such conditions, you have to be extremely alert. Engaging in any kind of speculation or assertive stance over the future settings of a project could be lethal. We have taken that risk in many of our schemes that I would describe as voluntarily masochistic and sometimes suicidal propositions. There is no comfort zone on the unstable grounds where the most fundamental rules of urban planning don’t apply. This is the result of the total bankruptcy, the incompetence and the corruption of our state institutions. In such conditions, architecture has to be a political act. What could be at the outset an ordinary program can take on a whole other dimension. When the state does not build parks, memorials, museums, opera houses, social housing… The most ordinary programs such as a residential development, a night club, a corporate office tower or a commercial building have to be considered as projects that can hold a political charge. These private undertakings, which initially do not bear any heavy social or political accountability, can be the grounds for another kind of radicalism. This is where architecture should take on another kind of political responsibility, in formulating a history that is nonconsensual and not necessarily affirmative. I did not choose my battle fields. I chose to take action on distressed grounds where meaningful and generous efforts are much more needed.
About Bernard Khoury
Born in Beirut (1968). He studied architecture at the Rhode Island school of Design (BFA 1990 / B.Arch 1991) and Harvard University (M.Arch 1993). He was awarded by the municipality of Rome, the Borromini Prize honorable mention given to architects under 40 years of age (2001), the Architecture + Award (2004), the CNBC Award (2008) and nominated for several awards including the Aga Khan award (2002 / 2004/ 2021), the Chernikov prize (2010) and the Mies van der Rohe Award (2021). He co-founded the Arab Center for Architecture (2008), was a visiting professor in several universities including the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and L’Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. He has lectured and exhibited his work in over 150 institutions, including solo shows at the Aedes gallery in Berlin (2003), the Spazio per l’architecttura Milano (2016) and numerous group shows including YOU prison at the Fondazione Sandretto in Torino (2008), the opening show of the MAXXI museum in Roma (2010), the Frac Architecture Biennale in Orleans (2018), the Oris House of Architecture in Zagreb (2020) and the Architecture Biennale of Seoul (2021). He was the architect and co-curator of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s national pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). Over the years he has developed an international reputation and a diverse portfolio of projects in over fifteen countries. Khoury was nominated by the French Ministry of Culture Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (2020).