GlobalPrayers
2010/ 2013

Joseph Rustom

Mapping Global Dynamics in Beirut’s Religious Property

Joseph Rustom is a Lebanese architect with ten years of experience in the field of cultural heritage conservation. Since 2008, he is preparing a doctoral thesis in Urban Planning at the Brandenburg University of Technology on the impact of religious endowments on urban projects in Late Ottoman and French Mandate Beirut. Between 2000 and 2008, he was a project manager successively at Youssef Haidar Architects and Dagher, Hanna and Partners Architects where he participated in several conservation and rehabilitation projects, among them the Omari Mosque, the American University Archaeological Museum in Beirut and the Soap Museum in Saida. As a researcher, he led an extensive architectural study of the monastery of Mar Challita in Kesrouan, a project situated in the framework of the Atlas of Religious Spaces of Lebanon of the Université Saint Joseph in Beirut. Since 2005, he is Lecturer in Cultural Heritage Studies at the Faculty of Architecture of the Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts.

Rustom received his architecture degree from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Beirut, a post-graduate degree in Advanced Studies in the Preservation of Archaeological Sites and Monuments from the Université Marc Bloch in Strasbourg and a post-graduate degree of Advanced Studies in Urban Archeology from the Université François Rabelais in Tours.
As Global Prayers – Fellow he works together with Paola Yacoub on the projet “The Use of Iconography in New Places of Worship in Syria”.

Mapping Global Dynamics in Beirut’s Religious Property

Since the end of Lebanon’s war in 1990, religious property in Beirut has been witnessing new dynamics directly related to the new global processes. This phenomenon can be seen as a part of the strong satellization some religious communities are having toward one or several foreign countries to which they are related through common faith and/or common political agendas. Although these connections are not new in a country which gathers eighteen different religious communities that share the political power through a consociational form of government, the new dynamics introduced are operating at a quicker pace and on a bigger scale.

One effect of this phenomenon is the strong competition between the religious communities over the urban space by means of acquisition and transfer of religious property and construction of large-scale architectural projects. In a country where equality between the communities is a guarantee of civil peace, this competition is becoming a recurrent source of friction.

This research project seeks to map the transfer and acquisition of religious property as well as the new architectural projects of three religious denominations in postwar Beirut, namely the Maronite, the Shia, and the Sunni communities. It will analyze the new legal, political, and social mechanisms introduced by these denominations to impact on the urban space. Emphasis will be put on the role of the regional and global influences in the ways of financing, conception, management, use, and perception of the new spaces produced, while taking at the same time into consideration the complex power relations inside each community. A focus will be made on the new “interference spaces” between the religious communities. Beirut central district and the neighboring quarters of Bashura, Yessouiyeh and Nasra were chosen as a first study area.