A groundbreaking exhibition titled "Design 'In' Conflict" has transformed Lebanon's capital into a powerful stage for understanding how warfare extends beyond mere destruction to become an urban and social condition that fundamentally shapes space and reality. Rather than offering a post-conflict analysis, this collective research project investigates how the design world can actively engage with perpetual instability and uncertainty.
Curated by Archifeed founders Teymour Khoury and Yasmina Mahmoud alongside Tarek Mahmoud and Youssef Bassil, the exhibition was structured into four distinct sections: the Design and Architecture Student Showcase, the Amphitheater space, the Alumni Showcase, and the Vertical Survey installation. The comprehensive showcase brought together voices from across Lebanon's design community to examine how creativity can flourish even in the most challenging circumstances.
According to the curators, the exhibition represented a year-long effort born as a direct response to the intensification of Lebanon's ongoing conflict with Israel in fall 2024. "These violent episodes have been occurring at a high rate over the past 50 years, not sparing a single generation of Lebanese citizens," they explained. "Conflict here is therefore a mode of existence, a lens through which the built environment, material landscapes, and lived realities are continuously reconfigured."
The curators emphasized that architecture and design must engage with this reality by operating within the instability that emerges from conflict. In such extreme conditions, the primary shaping force becomes the context being designed for, requiring interventions based on objective understanding of circumstances that conflict imposes through its impact on both built environments and the people who inhabit them.
The student showcase featured innovative projects from nine Lebanese schools including the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanese American University (LAU), Lebanese University (LU), Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA), Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK), Saint Joseph University (USJ), American University of Science and Technology (AUST), Notre Dame University (NDU), and Phoenicia University. Students developed practical solutions responding to political uncertainty and social precariousness, offering visitors insight into daily living conditions in Lebanon.
Among the most compelling student projects was Rhea Bassil's "Sound Protection Kit" (SPK), addressing how sound has become a weapon with invisible yet profound effects on human health, including trauma, anxiety, post-traumatic disorders, insomnia, developmental delays, and sensory fatigue. Designed for large-scale production and easy packaging, the kit provides psychological relief through sound-absorbing ear covers similar to noise-canceling headphones, integrated with a soft fabric hood suitable for all ages from infants to adults.
Antoine Yazigi proposed the "Multi-Slot Connector," a revolutionary panel joint fundamental to modular construction, particularly valuable in post-war or post-disaster rebuilding contexts. The connector offers flexible and scalable solutions for reassembling living spaces using materials salvaged from collapsed buildings, demonstrating how design can facilitate reconstruction efforts.
More provocative works included Marc Khalil's "Survive, Live, Thrive," which reimagines everyday objects to meet brutal survival demands, such as transforming coat hangers into bows for shooting arrows. The project illuminates what it means to have daily life disrupted by conflict, showing how ordinary items can be repurposed for extraordinary circumstances.
Süleyman Haber's "Humanoid Shield Carrier" proposed "Lifestrap," a human carrying harness designed to protect wearers by providing up to two natural humanoid buffers. This provocative statement highlights how civilians are used as human shields and how denunciations of this practice consistently go unheeded in conflict zones.
Zoe Sakr's "Human Black Box" functions as a data recorder for humans, addressing the absence of tools designed to trace victims' bodies or record their final moments. The tracking mechanism can locate those who disappear while leaving final testimony both as family legacy and war evidence, providing dignity and closure in impossible circumstances.
The Amphitheater section incorporated four components: interviews, cinema, performances, and debate. "Voices in Condition: Through Conflict" collected testimonies from Lebanese thinkers, artists, and designers who face instability as a transformative force. The cinema component featured "Even Rocks Flew Away," a short film by Lebanese University student Anis Nassereddine addressing cycles of violence through examination of building materials in Beirut and Southern Lebanon.
Drama students from Lebanese University staged "Riviera," a performance using words, gestures, and fragility to compose a layered portrait of war. Two public panels completed the Amphitheater program: "Conflict as a Spatial Condition" and "Conflict as Structure: The Social Fabric of Instability," fostering community dialogue about design's role in unstable environments.
The Alumni Showcase invited young professionals to present their perspectives on the same themes explored in the student exhibition. Paolo Barkett's "The Window Project" stood out as particularly notable research exploring how openings in Burj El Murr became instruments of surveillance and transformation, reconstructing how the tower projected geographies of restriction across Beirut.
The final section, "Vertical Survey," transformed the exhibition location into a site for forensic inquiry. Through methodical analysis, this installation documented how the tower's deterioration serves as a symptom of broader political, urban, and social erosion affecting Lebanese society, using the building itself as both subject and venue for investigation.
When asked about design's value during times of instability and what international designers can learn from Lebanese practice, the four curators emphasized that rather than fetishizing or glorifying wars, the exhibited works stem from rigorous understanding of conflict's material reality. Together, they tell stories rooted in Lebanese conflict experience while presenting a more rational dimension of design and architecture that remains deeply concerned with human needs, offering a model for grounded, responsive practice wherever uncertainty exists.
