Beirut Courthouse

Notes

Farid Trad took the project as design and build (turn-key). Khalil Khoury assisted him on the design. The building was inaugurated on September 30, 1963. Trad's original design had two rows of columns in its front. Yet, after having erected the columns, he decided to remove the outer row because he found the façade too pompous. The columns were literally cut and replaced with steel cables that hold the entrance canopy from above. This incident is symptomatic of the cautiousness with which Trad's generation operated, a transitional generation between the Beaux-Arts tradition and the moderns. Trad insisted on having the Courthouse, a building of national value, faced with large panels of local Baalbeck stone. The sub-contractors responsible for the stone finishing (Riad Rizk, National Engineering & Contracting Company) were thus forced to purchase huge machines from Italy and hire experts for the job. This was one step towards establishing a modern building industry in Lebanon.
Some figures: The total area is 38,000 sq.m. The main hall is 105 x 20 m. Construction cost: 6,500,000 Lebanese Pounds.
Two projects were designed earlier but were never built: one by architect Pierre-Edouard Lambert in 1948 (IFA archives) and another by architect Edmond Rosenheck in 1950.

Sources

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