Across a period of multiple crises and a structurally instable government, amongst other things, there has been a strong national decline in cultural activity, production, and presence in the city of Beirut. With this, national identity is faltering, and citizens begin to give up on their home nation. Who can is emigrating, and the rest lay abandoned and discouraged in an increasingly privatized and unwelcoming environment.

What role can culture play in the complex transitions cities are currently going through? What aspects can be combined in order to suggest architecture appropriate for a scenario of hardships, which also strengthens national identity and the image of the city? Ultimately, how can a building complex informed by cultural production contribute to the narration and revival of cultural activity?

The task at hand is the design of a productive building which revolves around a culturally relevant produce and manages to evoke the social rituals and greater historic context which go with it. This should strengthen and reinstate pride towards local produce, reform ties to the country and its rich lands, and also support the citizens and the complex urban life which surround it. The design of an urban winery and arak distillery shall be the assignment utilized as means of researching and exploring this challenge.

The herring gull is a bird species with a red dot on its beak. Its chicks are fully dependant on their mother for the first phase of their life, and resultantly develop a clear instinct towards the beak of their mother as this is their known source of sustenance. Interestingly enough the chicks respond with the same excitement when an object is brought about which only assimilates the beak, characteristically with the red dot. Studies showed that the chicks reacted just as much towards simply a stick with a red dot on it, and even more so to a stick with several dots or a larger red dot painted on. Qualities which in fact are never seen in the exact same manner on their mother’s beak from which the actual desired food would be brought. Despite the contrast between a herring gull chick and a more developed, presumably intelligent, human being, the anecdote conveys an important principle of the visual arts. As the chicks are deluded by the familiar yet amplified stimulus, so does the human mind build excitement and apparent interest for that which is the most visually stimulating, irrespective of the true understanding of the perceived subject. This same ideology has several instances where it is exploited in the built environment of today.