❊ What Should We Do About the Egg ?

Thanks to Rami, I learned that there might be plans for demolishing Beirut’s famous Egg-shaped building “very soon”.

I’m not one of those bleeding hearts who considers any old building to be a “heritage site”. I see the importance of development and I believe that anything you build right now can be classified as “heritage” in 50 years.

But I do make exceptions. For example, when I feel that a structure is especially significant or indicative of an architectural and cultural period (The Baalback Roman ruins, the various citadels, the Tripoli trade fair, typical modernist buildings in Beirut..etc). I also place value on an item’s uniqueness. I don’t care much if an old Lebanese house is being destroyed if many similar houses still exist. But I will chain myself to and vigorously defend the last house standing of a certain architectural species.

The Egg classifies on both counts. I don’t want it to be demolished. But at the same time, I don’t want it to remain in its present state, because honestly I find it to be one big ugly eye-sore.

Architects like Bernard Koury have proposed beautiful solutions to resurrect the structure. But are the Lebanese willing to pay the costs? Somebody will need to pay for a)The cost of rehabilitating the structure and b)The money the government loses from not being able to sell this extremely valuable land and develop it.

Some critics are blasting the plans for destroying the Egg as motivated only by profit. Those people conveniently forget that the building was initially built to be a cutting edge movie theater. Their motivation at the time was also to make profit.