“W hich concrete or heritage will win?” The question, asked in 2015 in an article in L'Orient-Le Jour, Lebanon's leading French-language daily, is once again more topical than ever. Because the shock wave that ravaged the Lebanese capital on August 4 did not only take the lives of 160 people with it. It is also all the Lebanese heritage of Beirut that has been damaged. More precisely: the districts sheltering the highest density of this very particular architecture covering the period between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
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"A heritage today in danger of death", affirms Fadlo Dagher, architect in Beirut, member of the Association for the protection of sites and old residences in Lebanon (Apsad) and fervent defender of heritage for thirty years. “Thirty years ago, after the war, the city center was destroyed,” he recalls. Real estate developers preferred to raze everything rather than renovate and restore to build
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