Like a Rubik's Cube

Should you have supposed that I was finished with tiled facades, you would have been wrong.

Ha.

I walked past this one the other day and I immediately began twisting and turning it in my mind, as though it were a puzzle to solve.

I like the idea. It would be fun to reconstruct a building, rotating its planes along a hidden central axis, getting everything to match, imposing order on chaos.

Tiles Once Again

Tucked in with the old ottoman mansions and the shiny new shopping malls, run down flats from the 1940s and 50s and brand new luxury high-rises you'll also find one a tiled mosaic or two. It has been far too long since the last time I posted a photo of tiles like these.

This one almost  feels like a cartoon, like theater scenery or an illustration in a children's book.  It makes the whole street feel different, dynamic and optimistic in a cup-half-full kind of way.

Hello Out There

Hello? Is anyone there?

If anyone is reading this blog, you have my sincere thanks and you deserve a reward. Thanks for hanging in there.

I feel like I've been absent for ages and for most of the summer I was.  I was on vacation. But even after I got back to Beirut I didn't get back to blogging. There were too many distractions. Until now.

Blogging is too much fun to stay away for long. Plus, I got a really fun new lens for my camera this summer and that's been a game changer. I've had a good time figuring out what it can do. I promise, from now on I'll be here.

I'll be here to show you streets like this one that caught my eye. I love this because blonde is more fun. I love the mix of signs and I love the streetlight that's on for no reason and yes, those are tiles on that building.

It's good to be back.

Tiles, A Retrospective

I've wanted to post this for some time; a retrospective of some of the decorative tile designs on West-Beirut facades. These have all appeared here on Beirut Pursuit in the past.

It's neat to see them side by side.

Tiles Downtown

Downtown Beirut is squeaky-clean, new or newly renovated, full of high-end living, shopping and dining. Tucked in there with all the sleek, new, well-kept buildings is this one:

See it? See the mini-tiles on the facade?

I never would have expected to find a tiled building in that neighborhood; surprising that it survived intact, more surprising still that it survived reconstruction.

Chances are, if I hadn't gone looking for tiled facades I never would have noticed this building.  But when I consider how many tiled buildings there are in Beirut it makes me smile to know that there's one downtown too.

Framed

Lately, I've been very interested in Beirut's tiled facades. I like how the wires strung all around framed this view of yet another one that I recently found in Hamra.

I can't help feeling bemused and possibly amazed that tiles like this were once the hottest thing in architecture in Beirut.

One of the Mysteries

Contradictions, inconsistencies, paradoxes, conundrums.

That's what you call it when you've got a handle on the facts, when you really grasp what's going on, when you can identify what the pieces are and how they interrelate in a bigger story of something that doesn't make sense.

But without that, without identifying the contradictory factors, or the premises that can't logically exist together . . . without that an analysis will never step beyond the domain of mystery. 

For me (most of the time), Beirut continues to be one of the mysteries.

Start Seeing

The world is a big, complicated, chaotic place where a million things happen, change, or simply exist all at once. You can't possibly notice everything, all the details. That's why sometimes it feels like things that have been there all along begin to exist when you first think to notice them.

That's what has happened for me as I've gone around looking for tiled buildings in Beirut.

Looking for them, as a process, has pulled them from the negative space of my life.  They jump out at me now and demand my consideration, my acknowledgment of them as a genre in the context of all that is Beirut.

Once Swanky

I must have passed this building a dozen or more times before I really looked at it today.  I feel like I saw it for the first time.  For the first time I noticed that black and white tile and the angle of the decadent entryway.  This is a place with a sense of itself.  You can tell when you look at it, you just simply know that once long ago it was swanky.

It's abandoned now, lonely too maybe. 

Tiled Balconies

There's something about these orangy-brown tiled balconies that I really like. The color combination is unusual, but pleasing (I think). And it's kind of cool how the blocks of color are layered, as though the architecht simply spread some color swatches out and thought, "yes, that will work!"

They're different, unlike any other balcony in the city probably. Maybe it's as simple as that. Maybe that's why I like them.

The Colors

Tiles seem to have become the latest genre that I've attempted to exhaust. So far, I've really loved the tiled facades that I've shown--they've been kind of retro, a little bit awesome.  Of course, I love a good pattern, especially if it's infinitely repeatable.

But that brings me to today, and today I have to admit that my affection for tiled facades has its limits.

Can't say I'm very fond of this one, for example. Maybe it's the colors?

Dotted

I think these tiles are quite cute. I like the dotted look, and it makes me wonder if living in a building with a blue, dotty exterior would change a person. If they're happy living there, would it make them grow fonder of blue?

Would it do that to me, to you?

15 x 15 Tile

This building is directly across from one of the Hariri residences. With my back turned to the famous estate across the way, I focused my gaze on this house, and pulled out my camera to take a picture. Still, the security folks were not at all happy about my camera, not happy about its proximity to their domain. No photographs! one of them called out. I called back, pointing at this building with its amazing, unexpected, crazy tile designs. Please, I said. This is what I want a picture of. I promised I wouldn't take any pictures of the other side of the street.

He let me carry on and I kept my promise.

From a distance all those tiny little squares blend into lines and blocks of color.

I decided to post this enlarged section to better show the tiny tiles that also compose the blue facing on the intersecting face. I would have liked to get a clearer picture, but it's been cloudy and rainy and sometimes this is as good as it gets.

Pacific Hotel

Here's another tiled exterior. For as long as I've been in Beirut, the Pacific Hotel has been in ruins. This particular kind of ruination look like war damage.

It sits on prime real estate, so anything could be in store for the place. It's fate isn't known (to me, anyway) and I sometimes wonder if it will be revitalized (which would be awesome) or if it will be cleared out for something new (which might be awesome, you never know).

Whatever happens next, I hope they keep the blue tile and refurbish the yellow lettering. I like the color combination and the composition, the marquee Vegas-like feel of it.