2024 - Sharing Daylight

Beirut is an old city, one that has grown naturally and organically with little to no urban planning and organization. Buildings are built and demolished and rebuilt taller within the confines of contested plots of land. This dense organic sprawl results in a recurring condition of negativity, whereas buildings would cluster along the periphery of the street leaving the center of each block void. These voids become a sort of urban canyon, whereas the buildings around it are exceptionally tightly packed together, and receive little to no sunlight, and the balconies facing them fall into disuse, as residents are unwilling to use the unilluminated and uncomfortably intimate and exposed space. Thus, the triad of issues that rise in these areas are that of illumination, privacy and function; what device can we create that will provide privacy while enhancing natural daylight access and encouraging the usage of these balconies? How can these tenants that share such a narrow shaft share daylight?