Summer Workshop at LAU
Fragments of Repair is a 10-day design workshop for architecture students that examines how architecture can respond to damaged and fragmented urban conditions. Working within a Lebanese context marked by rupture, vacancy, war-related damage, abandonment, or spatial discontinuity, students investigate broken urban relationships and identify opportunities for intervention. Rather than equating repair with simple reconstruction, the workshop understands repair as the process of reconnecting fragmented urban fabrics, restoring spatial continuity, reactivating public life, introducing collective programs, and addressing memory, resilience, and environmental recovery. Students work across three interconnected scales: the district, the block or street segment, and the architectural intervention, using analysis to reveal hidden structures, disrupted relationships, and the potential for transformation.
The workshop aims to develop students’ ability to identify and map forms of fragmentation, translate urban diagnosis into a coherent repair strategy, and formulate focused architectural proposals grounded in broader social, spatial, and environmental conditions. Expected outputs include an analytical atlas, repair strategy diagrams, a neighborhood or block framework plan, and one architectural intervention developed through plans, sections, diagrams, and models. The final presentation should construct a clear visual narrative linking existing conditions to proposed transformation, while demonstrating how repair can unfold through phased, incremental, and catalytic interventions rather than through comprehensive replacement.
The 2026 edition of Fragments of Repair focuses on the adjacent areas of Spears and Bachoura in Beirut, two urban territories characterized by distinct yet interconnected forms of fragmentation. Through detailed site documentation, mapping, and spatial diagnosis, students examine the effects of infrastructural rupture, vacant and residual spaces, damaged or underused buildings, changing urban functions, and discontinuities within the public realm. The two areas provide a testing ground for exploring how small-scale architectural interventions and broader urban strategies can reconnect fragmented spaces, reinforce neighborhood relationships, reactivate collective life, and contribute to more resilient forms of urban repair.
Fragments of Repair: Reimagining Damaged Urban Fabrics. D. Aouad / K. Fawwaz. July 27-August 10.
This workshop is in collaboration with We Design Beirut, and selected outcome of this effort will be exhibited in May 2027.
