Cultural Briefings

Lebanese-born architect Amale Andraos and her company, WORKac, have been selected to design the future Beirut Museum of Art. The art museum, whose project had previously been awarded to Paris-based Lebanese architect Hala Wardé in a 2016 competition, will now be built under Andraos, featuring an open-view walkway that transforms the museum’s interior rooms into an “indoor-outdoor” space. The site, owned by Université Saint-Joseph, had marked the Green Line separating Muslim areas from Christian ones during the Lebanese civil war. The design is intended to “break down the barriers of the museum and allow members of the community open views and access,” in the words of Ali Oriaku from The Architect’s Newspaper. Oriaku emphasizes that the ‘“open museum” idea is especially significant when considering the building’s location on a site known for its history of religious segregation and conflict.”

On a donated plot of land on the outskirts of Zarzis, a cemetery marked by a sign labeled “Cemetery for Unknown” in six languages has become the resting place for hundreds of unidentified bodies. One Tunisian man has devoted himself to giving migrants who died at sea dignity in death. At 52, Chamseddine Marzoug, a former fisherman-turned-gravedigger, has built over 400 graves in the span of a dozen years for migrants who perished at sea in an effort to reach Europe. Coming from Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, as well as Tunisia, these migrants often washed ashore with no family to claim their bodies. “They didn’t have any families to care for them,” he was quoted last September in a Washington Post article by Sudarsan Raghavan, continuing, “So I decided to become their family.”