We are super pleased that the map is now part of the collection of the following institutions: The Huntington Museum, CalArts Library, Tufts University, Art Center Library, University of Redlands, The University of Houston, the Getty Research Center and MIT. This was thanks to Llano del Rio collective that included us in their collection. Information below of all those included and the project. Fellow Communards & Communal Fellows is a…
The official launch of the Bourj Al Shamali paper map!
We finally did it! The map was officially launched on 25th January 2019 at Bourj Al Shamali’s Al Houla library and people LOVED the map! It was a really really great day and all of us who worked on the project were so chuffed to see the positive response. We printed 2,000 copies and many people dropped by to get a copy of the map. Mustapha gave a talk explaining…
We have a map & Beirut Design Week!
Apologies for the silence but we have been busy working away and participatory processes have been time consuming! The good news is that we have a map! So here is an update on some of the things we have been up to: – We now have the map that has been revised by many. Producing something like this for a community of 22,000 people has meant having to involve many…
A Community Garden Centre designed by AHO – the Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Despite all the hard work, we were upset that we had to cancel our work with the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and their Scarcity and Creativity Studio . AHO made some designs for us, but security concerns of students working in the camp and bureaucratic delays in Lebanon prevented us from having the team visit Bourj Al Shamali and build their design. The aim was to design and build a workshop…
Exhibition and Mapping Workshop
Here is an article that Firas Ismail wrote for Public Lab about our exhibition and mapping workshop: On 4 -5 February, an exhibition of our balloon mapping project took place in Al Hula Association in Bourj Al Shamali refugee camp. The exhibition was divided into several sections with different themes and information. At the entrance, the exhibition had a small survey for visitors who came to see the exhibition. The…
A talk at M Pavillion
We are super excited to have been invited to give a talk with Assemble Papers about our mapping project at M Pavillion in Melbourne. We will be connecting by Skype from Lebanon. MPavilion is an event hub, a meeting place, a temporary landmark, a spontaneous detour and a starting point. From October 2016 to February 2017 they are collaborating with thinkers, doers and makers to bring to Melbourne a free four–month program…
Balloon Mapping Guides in Arabic and German
During our stay in Berlin, key in our work was increasing awareness of balloon mapping and our work at Bourj Al Shamali. For this purpose, we are very pleased to have translated Public Lab’s balloon mapping guide into Arabic and German. These are now available under a creative commons license in Public Lab’s webpage. We are very grateful to the Andrea von Braun Foundation who supported our stay in Berlin,…
A Public Lab Chapter in the camp
We are very pleased to be joining the Public Lab community as a Public Lab chapter. This is our rationale: Background and Problem Refugee camps are transitory solutions that, as they endure, end up becoming informally constructed cities with a strong negative imprint on the local environment. An example of this is Bourj Al Shamali Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon. Founded in 1948, it has now taken on the air…
Marianne Potvin, Harvard researcher, visits us
Marianne Potvin, a PhD student at the urban planning department at Harvard University visited Bourj Al Shamali on Wednesday 5 August 2015. Marianne studies the intersection of humanitarianism and urbanism, and her aim for her Harvard-sponsored research in Lebanon was to learn and document how different aid agencies are dealing with the challenges of providing assistance in densely urbanised areas, and how (and if) they are using and developing new tools and…