B(ei)rutalism – Post-Conflict Modern Ruin - Restoration, Extension and Conversion of “The Egg”, Beirut

Authors’ Comment

As post-conflict reconstruction becomes an increasingly common reality, the question is no longer only how we rebuild, but what we choose to keep of what has survived.
B(E)IRUTALISM starts from the conviction that a ruin is not a void to be filled, but a living archive of collective memory – and that architecture can learn to listen to it rather than erase it.

Located in the heart of Beirut, "The Egg" is a landmark of 1960s Brutalism whose story was abruptly interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1975. Left unfinished, the structure became a strategic bunker and sniper post on the "Green Line" – the demarcation zone that divided the city for fifteen years.

The conceptual starting point of the project, however, is the 2019 Revolution, when the ruin was spontaneously occupied by protesters and reactivated through projections, debates and artistic events, without any official intervention. This collective gesture validated the project's central hypothesis: a building can be reborn not through physical restoration, but through the emotional reconnection of people with space.

The intervention is articulated around three principles – legibility, reversibility and detachment. The new proposal neither absorbs nor conceals the wound; instead, it exposes and frames it.

The programme is organised chronologically along the vertical axis, turning the section into a narrative in three temporal registers. The past lies in the Museum of Collective Memory in the basement, where the exposed foundations become a monumental, top-lit atrium.
The present occupies the ground floor, returned to the community as a public square.
The future unfolds in the Visual Arts Centre and in the restored shell, brought back to its original function as a cinema.

The extension volume deliberately steps back, acting as a neutral backdrop that respects the autonomy of the ovoid form. On its monolithic façade, the material trauma of the existing building is carried over through "shot" openings – a controlled reinterpretation of bullet marks that transfers the memory of the scar onto the new structure.

In this way, "The Egg" is no longer merely a witness to conflict, but a place where the city can look back on its past, inhabit its present and imagine its future.