The Rose House: Emergency Room Alert.

 

Two years after British artist Tom Young held his site-specific painting exhibition, ‘At The Rose House’, the building is today in a lamentable state. At the date of the exhibition, the Rose House was already in a shape that needed urgent repairs. Today the pictures, more than words, depict the gravity of the situation.

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Although privately owned by Mr Hisham Jaroudi, the house is left unguarded and anyone can enter its premises. As the pictures show, many fixtures are missing and were probably stolen. Large cracks in the walls have either appeared or got worse.

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While it was structurally possible to live at the Rose House (as demonstrated by Fayza El Khazen who lived in the house until October 2014 whilst Tom Young made his paintings during a sejour of 6 months inside the Rose House), the current state of the building clearly is a dissuasion factor.

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Walking inside the Rose House today, let alone spending a few days there, is technically dangerous. As windows and shutters are left open and broken, the house is being vandalized and gradually deteriorated by the elements.

It’s not hard to imagine seeing a building of national importance left in such a state; the Lebanese government is not exactly in an economic surplus situation, but we cannot understand how can somebody who apparently cares about the property is leaving it to crumble.

The APLH calls on the owner to remember the promise he made on TV, to restore the Rose House, and be an example of civic and cultural responsibility by protecting and preserving this beautiful symbol of old Beirut.

 

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Of Men And Ruins Issue III :: A Compendium :: 2014-2015-2016

This issue of OMR has been long in the making, but it’s finally here, and we hope you enjoy it. The APLH has no deadlines to issue a publication, since it’s an independent entity with benevolent members who provide their work and time for free. we do not know when the next issue will be ready but it’s already in the works. It all depends on our personal schedules and on the good people who decide to help us on the way.

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This Issue III is unlike its predecessors in that it unites articles from the last three years, dealing with local, regional and world heritage in a publication that spans 15o pages in a massive A3 (A2 spread) format.

We couldn’t find sponsors to help us print this 3rd issue, but we want to share it with you anyway, in soft copy format. You can download this new issue here.

Once the file expires, you can request your free download by emailing to info@protect-lebaneseheritage.com.

We would like to thank all those involved in this 3rd installment of OMR, namely the students of the Lebanese University – Arts and Design – Deir el Qamar, for the layout work they gave us as part of their layout/art direction apprenticeship course. As their first major layout project, we tell them Hats Off and THANKS for doing their bit in the documentation of Lebanese heritage. Every new Issue of OMR is better, more refined, more information-packed and more Passionate than its predecessor because we believe that someone somewhere sees meaning in what we’re doing. We’re quite happy with the result ourselves and we hope you agree. Thank you for your interest and happy reading!

APLH

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