Beirut offers little public green space. “Beirut Pine Forest” in the city center is soon to be reopened, after having been closed for decades. Architect Raëd Abillama has shown how the park should be upgraded to serve as many users as possible.

The architects divided the park into three zones: a green living room for leisure and relaxation, similar to a classic park; an urban extension & fitness zone, where a broad range of activities is possible, everything from a skating park to a playground to fitness areas; and a cultural, public programs & community events zone, with space for markets, festivals, outdoor exhibitions and installations, and a botanical garden. In this way, all visitors – an estimated 25,000 or more per day – will be able to use and enjoy the Pine Forest as they wish. The park is intended to be filled with life all week long, not just on the weekends.

Project author Raëd Abillama says: “Architecture is more than deciding which park bench to place where.”

Read feature interview in 4th Holcim Awards 2014/2015 (flip-book)

As one of the three main Holcim Awards winners for Africa Middle East in 2014, “Evergreen City” automatically qualified as a finalist in the Global Holcim Awards 2015. All 15 finalist project teams were asked to submit an updated and more comprehensive entry that was evaluated by a global jury in March 2015.

View project entry posters - Global Holcim Awards

The results of the global phase of the 4th Holcim Awards competition were announced on April 20, 2015.

Read full media release - Sustainable design improving communities

The winners of the global phase of the 4th International Holcim Awards competition will be revealed on April 20, 2015. The results will be announced via the Holcim Awards website.

Architect Raëd Abillama views the sensitive integration of the existing state of the forest into a user-friendly urban park as the most outstanding element of his Holcim Awards Silver winning project. “Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation” in Beirut, Lebanon develops the facilities and services needed in the existing park – a project commissioned by the municipality of Beirut with the help of Region Ile de France in 1992, for which a team of French and Lebanese architects (Jacques Sgard, France Trébucq, Ivy Papadakis, Jean-Claude Hardy, Pierre Neema and Frederic Francis) proposed a new layout – to open it to the public, and its promotion for cultural, social, sports, and environmental activities – while also maintaining and conserving the park’s natural habitats.

Watch video

The twelve winning projects of the Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East focus mainly on enhancing social and environmental resilience, as well as the economy of construction. The winning submissions show how multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing design and building are being developed. A green building in Turkey, an urban forest rehabilitation in Lebanon, and a low-cost housing plan in Ethiopia received the top prizes.

The project’s bold intention to open up a territory – located in the midst of the city’s “concrete jungle” and essentially suppressed and forgotten in the collective memory – to the public at large was strongly commended by the jury. The city of Beirut, under constant pressure by private development to use every piece of available land for more and more expansion, must rehabilitate its green spaces and make them accessible to the public – a restoration not only of its natural habitat but most importantly of the very ideal of the city as collective body – Beirut’s civitas.