The Coop, 2019

The Coop, 2019

Before 1975, the shop owners in the central Beirut markets would rent their shop windows and doors to street vendors who sold counterfeit jeans, cassettes and electronics. During the two-year civil war, the market was uprooted, and the street vendors relocated, setting up their tin kiosks along the waterfront of the corniche in Raouche. Later, during the Israeli invasion in 1982, the vendors had to evacuate the area, and in response, 575 of them formed a cooperative to raise money for the construction of Raouche Market at an inland location. They planned to build this market in a new residential and commercial neighbourhood in the south of the city. The newly designed building would have had 600 units and housed all the scattered shops and stalls. However, the construction was brought to a halt in 1986 with a campaign against the privatization of the market. With one façade slanted and the other two straight, the distinctive design of this building, particularly in relation to its current surroundings, renders it conspicuous and noticeably incomplete.