Post-digital Depot
Beirut/ LB / 2022
Complex Projects/ TU Delft
**follow the link to reach extended project
https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid%3A6a20c92a-df84-4f04-9ebc-14b148f58781?collection=education
Post-digital is concerned with rapidly changed and changing relationships with digital technologies and art forms.
Is it possible to preserve heritage beyond the limitations of physical archiving?
Beirut is a city of perpetual unrest and resultantly under constant decay. Layers of its rich culture are gradually lost. Yet, culture is one of the strongest elements that unites and ties Beirutians together. Therefore, it should be stored and preserved. Storing of a rather abstract entity such as culture has similarities with storing goods or objects but it also requires a unique approach. The program: “Post-digital Depot” serves this specific need, as an archive in which material objects are analyzed, restored and translated to a digital medium. The location of the project is in close proximity to the harbor, heavily impacted due to the blast in 2020. This decision of location highlights Beirut’s character as a city of dynamic flows of people, information and culture as well as providing a tabula rasa, a fresh start to be the prototype for preservation of culture in war torn cities.
Post-digital depot functions as an artery from land to sea and eco-park to river, therefore it responds differently to these megaforces. On the river elevation, the embedded aluminum façade fully blends in so that the tower appears to be floating from the estuary. On the opposite eco-park elevation, the roof ends at the same level as the hill, allowing visitors and locals to make free use of the public space.
Both program and the concept is built upon the tension between physical and digital. Resultantly, 3 main programatic divisions: data center, arts archieve and intermediary museum space are generated. These translate directly into architectural ambitions of data center as a vertical lantern for the port, the arts archive as a horizontal layer embedded into the topography as a “kunstbunker” and the connection element: museum utilizing topography as a monument in itself.
