Quarantaine,” Abitare, 386 (1999): 44–50; “Club B018 en Beirut” in A+T 12 (1999): 126–135; Stefano Pavarini, “Quasi un altro mondo,” l’ARCA 141 (1999): 24–31; Cynthia C. Davidson, “Dispatch from Beirut: A Project by Bernard Khoury,” ANY 24 (1999): 8–11; Kaye Geipel, “B018, versenkt: Music-hall in Beirut,” Bauwelt 50, (1999): 2392–7; “Heavy Metal,” Architecture (2000): 78–85; [Untitled review], Casabella 65 (2000): 80; “Projet B018, club de jazz,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 340 (2002): 71; Anna Brichting and Federico Neder, “Nuit en Boîte–B018 music club: Architecte Bernard Khoury, Beirut, Lebanon,” Faces 56 (2004): 42–3. 14– L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 340 (2002): 71. 15– Bauwelt 50 (1999): 2393. 16– Anna Grichting and Frederico Neder, “Nuit en Boîte,” Faces 56 (2004). 17– In a lecture at the American University of Beirut in April 2002 as well as in a personal interview in June 2006, Khoury reiterated his position as an architect who does not concentrate much on these aspects, but rather on the functional and practical qualities of the projects. 18– B-018 refers to the club owner’s beach resort, where he played music to a select audience of friends during the war period. 19– See Martin Jay, Refractions of Violence (London: Routledge, 2003), 11–24. 20– Suzanne Guerlac, “Bataille in Theory: Afterimages (Lascaux),” Diacritics 26. 2 (1996): 6–17. 21– For an indication of some of the polemical aspects of the project, see Omar Boustany, “J’irai danser sur vos tombes,” Revue 127 (2001): 186–190. 22– Bataille, The Tears of Eros, 72. 23– This military reference was also perceived by the reviewer of the Abitare, who compared the project to “a piece of military hardware – an aircraft carrier flight-deck or an oversized submarine – left behind after the war.” Abitare 386, 48. Khoury’s interest in technology is also evident in his other projects, including the Centrale restaurant, a restored patrician house that dates back to the late nineteenth century. There the architect executed a radical intervention into the old house, stripping its external walls, which were then framed by an external steel frame, and created an internal concrete structure, which was wrapped by
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a lattice framework of horizontal wooden strips. A barrel-cylinder was suspended precariously at the top of this empty shell, replacing traditional pitched roof. Part of the cylinder rotates to open up and offer a framed view of the city. 24– Hal Foster, Prosthetic Gods, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 113. 25– Foster, Prosthetic Gods, 114. 26– Foster, Prosthetic Gods, 110–115. 27– This notion of the unheimlich comes from Martin Heidegger. Its architectural manifestations were explored by Anthony Vidler in The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).
Architecture as Exquisite Violence