Tailors’ benches, each with a built-in sewing machine, line the wall of a long room in the Beirut Souks, in addition to tower shelves packed with rolls of fabric in a variety of vibrant hues. At Creative Space Beirut clients can select a piece of cloth, and then watch as a tailor begins to cut and sew a custom-made garment.

A new addition to the Souks, Creative Space Beirut, a nongovernmental organization founded in 2011, runs a free three-year fashion program for underprivileged students. Its presence in the Souks is part of a new initiative called Khan Al Joukh, which is bringing together local designers and artisans to create links to the city’s pre-war past.

Prior to Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, which devastated the city and took more than 120,000 lives between 1975 and 1990, Beirut’s lively souks were the heart of the city. Rich and poor alike wandered the narrow alleyways where local tailors plied their trade and small shops hawked fresh flowers, household items, vegetables, food, clothes and jewelry.

After the war, the reconstruction of downtown Beirut was entrusted to the Lebanese Company for the Development and Reconstruction of Beirut Central District — a controversial public-private joint-stock company known as Solidere — which expropriated the land, offering shop owners shares in the company in exchange for their property rights. Beginning in 1994, Solidere demolished vast swathes of the war-damaged medieval souks, leveling the land with bulldozers.