Edited by Gregory Buchakjian, Valérie Cachard. Foreword by Valérie Cachard. Text by Gregory Buchakjian.

An ambitious appraisal of Beirut’s ruined and abandoned architecture, with photo-documentation, archival materials and original research.

Over the past 150 years, Beirut has witnessed a cycle of unbridled growth, war, economic and social crises and migratory movements. It is in this territory ceaselessly destroyed and rebuilt, broken and regenerated, that Gregory Buchakjian has undertaken an artistic project and a research devoted to abandoned dwellings. Disclosing the survey of 744 buildings, the collection of archives and testimonies, a PhD thesis and the creation of photographic tableaux with the subjects surrounded by sagging furniture and mounds of rubbish, the process that constitutes the present book proposes new perspectives towards the city as well as instruments to reclaim it at times it is confronted with various forms of violence.