El Chami, Y. orcid.org/0000-0002-0055-3639 (2021) An American “garden” in an Oriental “desert”: the modernity of timber at the Syrian Protestant College of Beirut. Architectural Theory Review, 25 (1-2). pp. 199-215. ISSN 1326-4826
Abstract
This paper explores the role of timber in articulating a modern American project in nineteenth-century Lebanon. It focuses on the architecture of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, an educational institution founded by American missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1866. The paper examines the evolving role of timber within this foreign missionary project—deployed in multiple forms and scales—and traces the shifting values ascribed to its use. I argue that the missionaries used timber to elaborate specific relationships towards students and the city, reflecting cultural, racial, and religious notions of superiority, carving out an American “garden” in the “wilderness” of Ras Beirut. I analyze these theological aims and their practical application through the conceptual lens of Edward Said’s “modern Orientalism”. The deployment of timber as a claim-making and space-making device frames the construction of the Syrian Protestant College as a modern, imperial project.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | Timber; industrialism; Gothic revival; Orientalism; American missionaries; transnational architecture |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Architecture (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 15 Feb 2024 08:59 |
Last Modified: | 15 Feb 2024 08:59 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/13264826.2021.1958354 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209165 |
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Licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0