2018

Beirut is changing Identity, Memory seems to be subjugated, new High Buildings dominates traces, forgetting Human Factor and Scale, offices and Residential towers are creating a physical barrier with public realm. Noise is generating upon the city; light is used for stimulation for advertisements as billboards and digital screens. Noise within the day and night. Therefore a System that provides silence, generated by light should be applied within noise to initiate a space where people express their feelings, feel free, enjoy, scale and learn. It is a mixture between culture, entertainment and art. This gesture is made by using lands that are public but abandoned because of the high scale buildings. First the all Saints Church of Minet EL Hosen dominated by shadow is the first spot of silence within the city, second a popular art flow, third botanical garden, fourth the node the Hub the articulation that link the green corridor of Beirut to the dynamic path generated by Light and Shadow. Finally we arrive towards the light shadow theater, a public square by day and a stage for performance for mime theater and dark light shadow acts by night (eco-friendly intervention, that generates it's energy by its cover composed of solar panels).

The Problem:
Amman’s cemeteries are suffering from being neglected, unplanned and misused. These cemeteries are facing a big problem, it becomes a protected area for Unethical behaviors, nonetheless, placing loads of burden on the city. Moreover, the municipality’s only solution (in Amman) was to locate cemeteries outside the city. A total of 133 small cemeteries are within the Municipality boundaries now, many of which are located within highly populated residential neighborhoods, (these old Cemeteries were at the edge of the city, but due to the population and the city’s growth, these cemeteries became a part of the city).

Nowadays in Amman, the municipality has created two huge central cemeteries ‘’Sahab and Shafa Badran‘’, outside the City, which will eventually one day take place inside the city (like the other 133 cemeteries) but with a massive problems.

The Urban Level:
Central cemeteries aren’t the solution! Cemeteries must be integrated within neighborhoods and must act as positive spaces by adding new functions that serve the living and create a sense of social solidarity.

Cemetery's added functions:

01 Al-Tikyeh التكية
The 21st Century Tikyeh Contains the following:
- Library (dead people’s books, writings, archive).
- Storage (for the given things).
- Community Kitchen
- Multipurpose hall (for funerals and other neighborhood events).

02 The Park:
Open public space for the Neighborhood.

03 Funeral House:
- Mosque
- Space for laying out
- Space for Ritual Washing

The Site: Location: Chechens cemetery, Sweileh, Amman, Jordan.

The criteria was to select an existing old cemetery inside a dense residential neighborhood, as an example for the project.

The Architectural Level:
To design a module as burial units which will be moved underground level while using the roof of it as public spaces that serve the living needs in the neighborhood.

The project will be a sustainable response to Al-Azraq Heritage as a unique desert area to reach a balanced solution that creates a contrast between modern architecture and heritage area architecture, to create a complementary situation that will make the project effective in both the tourist and social aspects and restore the tourism and heritage value of the old village. also, will have the chance to avoid the extinction of such a kind of heritage in addition to solving many of the social problems in the region.

(Concept)
The basic idea is to deal with the site as a whole was derived from the way of Kevin Lynch deal in converting sites from illegible to accept and readable sites easy to navigate and deal by humans.

As for dealing with the blocks in the site has been preserved by not moving or transfer or change the features of any of them, but the inclusion of light and modern materials to create a complete contrast between ancient heritage materials and modern materials in order to give great importance to the heritage part and clarify the existence and the stage reached to, thus allowing a visitor to use the site without affecting heritage elements.

Project Overview
The same heritage blocks were used in the site and revived for use by the visitor to live in the heritage spirit of the region. Each block was employed in a different function from the other and has a different role in the definition of the visitor on the village heritage and the importance of the black desert region.
Facilitate mobility using the signs system.

Construction Overview:
In all cases, existing buildings have been preserved and no features have been changed. Light structural elements have been added to protect the old elements and ensure their importance. Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) glass is also used to reduce the sun's entry and use in generating power for each block to provide shade and power generation.

The Museum of Life aims at redefining the cemetery, and designing rituals that reject the connection with the body, and instead focuses on the connection with the memories; as a result, creating a unit Cemetery that does not expand, and instead is reusable.

This means Death and memories are permanent, but the grave isn't.

The new cemetery suggests new rituals which reject the attachment with the human body (i.e. the specific-space burial, the tombstone, and one to one visitations of the physical grave), and instead focuses on the attachment with memories through rituals that focus on the deceased’s life, ideas and his relations with his family and friends, thus creating a new entity in the cemetery, celebrating human life, and human memories.

The museum of life goes at doing this by dividing the program of the cemetery into three main parts.
The first part “The encounter” is the first space in which people are confronting death, it’s a space of complexity and contradiction, the main feature of which, is that the family, and the deceased’s physical body do not share the same entrance, and instead lead two different journeys that funnel down in the end to join them together.

Second part is “The courtyard of last memory”, which is a space connected to the burial chambers.
In the courtyard the family sits together with their loved one, to bid them farewell. Since the family is not permitted to enter the burial chambers, the courtyard –instead of the grave, becomes where they have seen their loved one last, which creates a sense of connection to the space, and not the physical grave. In the future, the courtyards become a collective space for visitation instead of the Grave.

Third part is the Museum of Life itself where family members share memories of their loved one, and come visit their loved ones memories in different remembrance chambers, some of which are collective for huge families and others which are more individual for reflection and meditation.