A pile of broken glass in Beirut, after the blast. Photograph by Batoul Faour.
Daniels student Batoul Faour takes top prize in Avery Review essay competition
Published: May 28, 2021
Batoul Faour has been named the first-prize winner in the 2021 Avery Review Essay Prize competition.
A Lebanese Canadian designer and researcher, Faour is a student in the post-professional architecture program at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty' of Architecture, Landscape and Design. Her winning essay is a distillation of her thesis project, which critically examines the role of architectural glass in exacerbating the damage from last year's catastrophic port explosion in Beirut.
The essay, which won Faour a $4,000 prize and top billing in the Avery Review's April issue, describes the way shattered window glass piled up in Beirut's streets after the blast. It traces the historical and contemporary uses of glass in Lebanon to reveal the politics behind the fragile material.
The Avery Review is a monthly architecture journal published by the Office of Publications at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture. The April issue is readable online and you can read Faour’s winning essay here.
