Beirut Art Center Rooftop Garden
Beirut, Lebanon · Operator: Beirut Art Center (BAC)
Overview
Amid Beirut's economic crisis and food insecurity, a citizen-run urban-farming garden on the rooftop of an art center. As a counter to monocultural and monopolistic structures, it offers a model of local cooperation grounded in sharing and collaboration.
Citizen participation
A community-run, mutual-aid garden conceived in 2022 as a prototype for urban farming. It uses a horizontal, decentralised model that emphasises sharing and collaboration over supply-and-demand logic, drawing on the farming history of the Jisr-el-Wati neighbourhood and connecting diverse groups working across artistic, scientific and academic perspectives.
Operating model
A non-profit mutual-aid project run by the art center, linked to its programs and supported by donations (e.g. GlobalGiving) and volunteer collaboration. It is not primarily oriented to sales but to sharing and local cooperation.
Impact
In crisis-hit Beirut, it has created a shared space linking art, research and local community, demonstrating a practical model of urban farming and mutual aid.
Land tenure
The garden uses the rooftop of the building owned and managed by the Beirut Art Center, run as part of the center's programming.
Crops
- vegetables
- herbs
Scale
Rooftop of the Beirut Art Center in the Jisr-el-Wati neighbourhood; a prototype urban-farming and mutual-aid community garden
Sources（2）
This entry is compiled from the public sources, official sites and research below.
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