PARIS: Last week the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris’ museum of urban planning and architecture, hosted a presentation by Lebanese architect Youssef Haidar, who discussed his restoration and modernization project for what will be a museum and urban cultural center called Beit Beirut.

It is hoped the presentation’s setting will prove a good omen for Beit Beirut. Known locally as Beit Barakat or simply “The Yellow House” [after the ochre sandstone of which it is built], it is located in the area of Ashrafieh once called Nasra and now more commonly known as Sodeco.

Terribly damaged yet still stunning, the building survived the civil war against great odds but was nearly lost to development. Indefatigable architect and conservation activist Mona Hallak saved it from demolition in 1997 and it’s been in the hands of the Beirut Municipality since 2003.

One of missions of the Pavillon de l’Arsenal (a 19th-century structure that itself became a museum in 1988) is to provide Parisians with information about projects in their city, inviting citizens to be involved in the process of architectural and urban creations.

In a sense, this is what the community of people working on the Beit Beirut project are aiming for. Besides the renovation, supporters hope Beit Beirut will become a locus of peaceful exchange and debate.

“It is the first project of this type in Lebanon in which the civil society played an active role,” said Youssef Haidar, who was in Paris with Beirut’s mayor, Bilal Hamad. “We hope it will become a tool for society.”

Paris became involved in the Beit Beirut project after Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë visited in 2006 and agreed to cooperate with the Beirut municipality on the restoration.

Beginning in 2008, Paris city hall provided technical and professional assistance and shepherded a scientific committee made up of architects and urban planners. During this session it was clear that all the parties involved were relieved the project finally seemed to be underway.

Haidar hopes to break ground in five to six months and says the building will take at least two years and up to $20 million to complete. Beirut municipality will provide the financing.

“It’s been a very complicated and very lengthy process,” said Paris’ Deputy Mayor Pierre Schapira. “When I first saw the building I couldn’t believe it could ever be restored, it looked like it should have been enveloped in bubble wrap.”

Haidar, who designed Sidon’s Soap Museum, AUB’s Museum of Archaeology and renovated the Al-Omari mosque, among others, will indeed preserve the original architecture and develop an extension that will link the V-shaped Barakat building together at the back of the structure.

Haidar said the project has been slow-going because it’s had to deal with two administrations. Beirut’s municipal authority, he explained, is comprised of the elected administration, headed by the mayor, as well as the muhafez, the appointed governor.

Speaking to a capacity crowd, Mayor Hamad – himself an engineer specializing in reinforced concrete – said that, during the civil war, he lived close to the demarcation line where the Barakat building is situated.

Its location on the former Green Line makes the project is all the more important. “There is only one Beirut,” he said. “It is neither a Christian nor a Muslim one.”

During the Civil War Beit Barakat was inhabited by a succession of Christian militiamen and later the Syrian army. It became a notorious sniper’s lair. In fact, Hamad said, a sniper nearby once shot at him.

Haidar showed photographs and a film that slowly pans the building’s interior. What appears to be an ordinary wooden door is in fact reinforced on the other side by concrete. A telltale rectangular opening ending in a funnel-shape was in place for snipers to shoot from. On the wall the snipers’ names are signed in graffiti. One inscription simply reads “Death.”

Haidar remarks that the construction of the Barakat building symbolized the beginning of architectural modernism in Mandate-era Beirut. “It was the first residential building conceived by architects, rather than builders,” he said.

In 1924 the Barakat family commissioned architect Youssef Aftimos, who also designed the Beirut city hall, to work on the project. Every room in the Barakat building had a view onto the street. In the 1930s Fouad Kozah added his famous concrete colonnade to the structure.

“Everything about it was a symbol of openness and then it became a war machine,” commented Haidar. Beit Beirut “… is like us Lebanese, it has wounds, visible and invisible, but we are moving on … There was a huge debate about whether we should keep or get rid of the traces of war,” he said. “It’s a process. We need to reconcile with our past so we didn’t want to erase these traces. We are healing but there will be scars and prosthetics.”

The first floor of Beit Beirut will be a Museum of Memory where the signs of the civil war will be kept intact. The second floor will focus on the modern history of Beirut and the third floor will be dedicated to temporary exhibitions. There will be a rooftop garden. A patio will be built between the restored building facing a modern addition built in glass and mirrors. “No sniper would dare settle in it,” Haidar remarked.

Representatives of the city of Paris say they are committed to accompanying the project to the end. The French Embassy in Beirut is also involved and has organized debates and conferences that helped to shape the museum’s cultural direction. The embassy will continue to provide institutional support once the museum is open.

The long road to saving Beit Barakat and transforming it into Beit Beirut may provide organizations such as the Association for Protecting Natural Sites and Old Buildings in Lebanon and Save Beirut Heritage with a much needed boost. With the wrecking ball of development weighing so heavy in Beirut, the battle to save the city’s architectural patrimony is all more pressing.

For more information see www.beitbeirut.org.