Credit: HW architecture

This museum programme will allow us to create a new cultural and social space and will single out this artistic territory with a strong and recognisable urban beacon
– Hala Wardé

Lebanese French Architect Hala Wardé will design a modern, contemporary art museum in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon.

An international jury featuring Richard Rogers, Rem Koolhaas, Julia Peyton-Jones and chaired by Pritzker Prize chair Lord Peter Palumbo selected Wardé’s firm HW architecture from a shortlist of 13 design teams to create a home for BeMA: Beirut Museum of Art.

The new museum will be centrally located in the heart of Beirut, positioned on a symbolically charged site that once marked the dividing lines in the Lebanese civil war and is now to be transformed into a site of unification.

The winning design features a central campanile tower that will rise high nearly 400ft above the base of the museum to act as a cultural beacon for the entire city. The campanile will include space for workshops and performances, as well as artist’s residences with expansive views of downtown Beirut.

The design also includes a public garden and landscaped promenade that will accommodate site-specific installations and artworks surrounded by lush vegetation, as well as an amphitheater for performing arts.

The jury praised the design for “the way it creates a succession of varied landscapes and spaces where art and society can come together.”

In their citation, they said: “The connections between garden, amphitheatre, exhibition spaces and roof garden have been well considered and offer a continuous visitor experience that lends itself to both exhibiting art and engaging with the community.”

Wardé said: “I'm delighted and honoured to realise my first major project in the city of Beirut where I was born, on such an exceptional site. This museum programme, in connection the local Saint Joseph University, will allow us to create a new cultural and social space and will single out this artistic territory with a strong and recognisable urban beacon, which through its multiple expressions, will belong to the new urban landscape of the city.”

Scheduled to open in 2020, the museum will be a multidisciplinary hub of art and design, and its collections and exhibitions are being developed “with the aim of bringing together diverse populations and narratives from the region and beyond.”

It will be situated across from the National Museum and located a few miles from David Adjaye’s art museum the Aishti Foundation. As such, it will anchor Beirut's new 'museum mile', home to the National Museum and Museum of Lebanese Prehistory, the Mineral Museum (MiM), Beit Beirut (House of Beirut), and the Metropolis Center.

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