On Tuesday March 3, 2014, under the patronage and in the presence of H.E. Mr. Rony Araiji, Minister of Culture, the Architecture Department of the USEK Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts organized a colloquium entitled: “The Policy of Safeguarding Urban and Architectural Heritage of Beirut”.

Following the opening speech delivered by Ms. Odile Khoury, Dr. Antoine Fichfich, Head of the Department of Architecture, underlined in his speech that “…from the mid nineteenth century till the mid twentieth century, Beirut was considered at the forefront of capitals and the city of culture, literature, engineering, and openness to all what is related to beauty. But following the misfortunes that devastated the country, Beirut drowned in absenteeism wherein the speculations of the real estate field prevailed because of the absence of law”. “Facing such unfortunate facts, the University’s Department of Architecture felt that it is concerned with working out this issue or at least help ratify the existing laws in order to improve what is left of our architectural heritage and preserve it”, he concluded.

Following the speech of Dr. Paul Zgheib, Dean of the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, who pointed out that this colloquium aims to shed light on the policy of safeguarding urban and architectural heritage of Beirut in order to promote the principles of common heritage, Rev. Fr. Hady Mahfouz, USEK President, highlighted in his speech the importance of the topic tackled by the colloquium because it falls at the core of the University’s vocation which consists in serving the society and the public affairs; he hoped that the participants will be able to reach fruitful and constructive recommendations.

At the end of the inaugural session, H.E. Mr. Rony Araiji stressed that “the Ministry of Culture is bearing alone all the burden and responsibility of preserving the Lebanese architectural heritage, while it must be a joint work among many departments and communities. And what makes the task of the Ministry even harder is the non-implementation of any national strategy that preserves the heritage, as well as the absence of laws and regulations that explicitly address this issue”.