Compound (Burj El Murr)
Beirut
Lebanon, 2011

Compound depicts Burj El Murr in Beirut, a high-rise project whose construction was halted in 1975, at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. Because of its height and strategic position along the Green Line, the dividing line between East and West Beirut, the unfinished building soon acquired a military function. The tower was used as an observation post and by snipers, transforming a structure intended as part of the modern commercial city into a closed and controlled site.

Wilschut photographed Burj El Murr in 2012, when the building had already stood largely untouched in central Beirut for decades. Its bare concrete structure still carried the traces of the civil war, while the city around it had continued to develop. Today, the tower remains unfinished and has not been structurally redeveloped. In recent years, however, it has occasionally taken on a new public role. In 2025, Burj El Murr was opened for the exhibition Design ‘In’ Conflict, in which young Lebanese designers and architects explored how war and political instability continue to shape the built environment.

The title Compound refers to this layered history. The building is both an architectural ruin and a former military position, an enclosed structure that once enabled control over part of the city. Today, Burj El Murr also functions as a carrier of collective memory: a structure that has barely changed physically, while its meaning within the city has continued to shift.