Woodworking Workshop with Sandy Lyen (beginner level)

Led by Sandy Lyen, this workshop will focus on woodworking for beginners who are interested in learning or practicing their basic skills. The workshop will take place over 4 days, and participants may sign up to one or more days. Reusing wood panels from the BAC’s past exhibitions, the workshop will allow participants to learn to design and build benches, planters, seats, and tables. The elements produced during the workshop will constitute your permanent contribution to this space that we are creating for all to share.

Over the past 2 years, Beirut Art Center has been working towards opening a rooftop garden for its community of visitors, friends, and neighbors. By making this large outdoor space habitable and hospitable, we hope to establish a working prototype for experimenting with forms of gathering, growing, making and sharing. These gestures, though modest, aspire to activate and advance discussions about land, food, and collectivity at a time of supply chain gridlocks, rampant inflation and widespread food insecurity. We have been keen on working with a wide network of local collaborators in setting up the space, and we are happy to announce this first workshop that will help furnish the rooftop with seating and smaller planting elements.

About Sandy:

Passionate about crafts, Sandy is a woodworker, instructor and designer working with different materials and techniques since 2014. In 2015, Sandy co-founded «Brut L’Atelier», a concept store, upcycling and refurbishing workshop in Mar Mikhael. She then moved to the industrial city where she worked with carpenters, metal welders and benders, finishing experts, and installers on small and large scale projects. Sandy is a former instructor and consultant at Warché(e) NGO and has showcased her work at the Beirut Design Fair.

Participants will learn:

• General safety and use of hand tools
• Understanding the material: nature, function, capacity, and treatment
• Process: design, production and execution
• Working with others and creating together
• Cutting, assembly, and finishing