Niemeyer’s Tripoli International Fair, The Ruins of Modernity
Rachid Karami International Fair of Tripoli
Oscar Niemeyer
Tripoli, Liban
34°26’14”N 35°49’24”E
1962
In the heart of Tripoli, Lebanon lies a large-scale project designed by Oscar Niemeyer. However, this vast international fair remains unfinished, like a cemetery of modernity.
Tripoli and Lebanon's golden age
Tripoli is Lebanon’s second largest city after Beirut. Located in the north of the country, it nevertheless suffers from the comparisons with the capital. Following the formation of Lebanon and its subsequent independence in 1943, the port city of Tripoli was forced to gradually disconnect itself from Syria. In 1948, its traditional free trade and cultural relations with its neighbour were shutdown, damaging the city’s fragile economy. This marginalisation was accompanied by negligence on the part of the state, underlining the gap with Beirut, which was economically crushing Tripoli due to its port activity. The relative homogeneity of Tripoli’s community structure reinforces a sense of belonging to the region and its city, where the newly born state was having difficulty finding its place. However, the liberalisation of the Lebanese economy in the 1950s brought a large amount of foreign capital into the country. As a result, Lebanon’s economy, infrastructure and state developed rapidly. However, there was a growing imbalance between the flamboyant capital, which attracted all the capital, and the other Lebanese cities. Tripoli, for example, has the highest poverty rates in the country, despite being only 80km from the capital. In addition, significant demographic growth and increasingly uncontrolled urbanisation revealed the city’s lack of infrastructure.
A policy of decentralisation was then studied, with the aim of developing the peripheral areas economically, socially and culturally. This policy was also developed in anticipation of the idea that resolving social and territorial inequalities could legitimise and affirm the unity of the young Lebanese nation-state.
Logically, the city of Tripoli was directly affected by this new modernisation policy, with major projects underway to turn it into a flourishing economic and tourist metropolis.
The Modernisation projects
Following the floods of January 1955, work was undertaken to consolidate the banks of the Kadisha, the river running through the old city. The frenzy of modernity helped to push the work through, but hundreds of old houses disappeared, the river was partially covered, and health and pollution problems arose. The architectural heritage and cultural identity of the old city were partially disfigured.
The early 1960s also saw the completion of work to expand the port at El Mina. Unfortunately, even renovated, the port could not compete with Beirut, and this only served to confirm the city’s economic backwardness.
It was against this backdrop of declining economic influence in Tripoli and attempts at political and territorial decentralisation that the international fair project was born. The development of ‘international fairs’ emerged in independent Arab countries as a way of affirming their desire to open up to new international trade and promote local know-how. The Baghdad International Fair (1954) and the Damascus International Fair (1955) are close examples to follow for the Lebanese project. This approach to building international fairs was also to be found later in West Africa, in newly independent countries such as Senegal.
An international fair designed by Oscar Niemeyer
In 1958, a project for the international fair was signed, initially to be held once a year in Beirut. In 1960, as part of a policy of regional balance, President Fouad Chehab finally signed the formal acceptance to build the Permanent International Fair choosing Tripoli as the final location.
In 1962, the Lebanese government chose Oscar Niemeyer, one of the most famous architects of the time, to design this architectural complex. The Brazilian architect visited the site and decided to create a third hub for the city, located between the old town and the port area of El Mina, along the coast. Tripoli (the three cities) would thus be able to reconnect itself with the Mediterranean, and proudly assert a new, modern image of the Middle East.
A flagship project quickly stripped of its ambitions
The initial project proposed an organic integration of the complex, anticipating the expansion of the city. It opted for a development along the coast, but with the International Fair set back as the focal point of a new district. The seafront could thus be taken over by residential, commercial and tourist facilities. The Fairground would serve as a crossroads between the old town, the port, the new district and the sea. A road infrastructure project linking Tripoli to Beirut and northern Syria was also defined.
Unfortunately, of the initial project, only the International Fair will be retained. The Lebanese government also imposed a disconnection from the seafront, instead directing the fair towards the old town, in total contradiction with the ambition to open up the city. The highway itself will be rerouted, completing the disconnection of the site from the surrounding area.
Building the unfinished modernity
The project now focuses on a 70-hectare elliptical site, set back from the sea and disconnected from the existing urban fabric. Niemeyer planned more than 60,000m² of buildings, with the main element being the exhibition pavilion. However, it was not until 1964 that work was able to begin, as the expropriation of agricultural land, in particular orange groves, delayed the start of construction. Tripoli, once known for its vast orange orchards and the perfume that wafted through the city, was erasing its past and part of its identity and betting on modernity.
The inauguration was scheduled for 1967, but following delays due to a lack of funds, it was postponed to 1969. Political events in Lebanon at the end of the 60s delayed progress on the project.
In 1975, the work was almost finished when the Lebanese civil war broke out and the project was halted. The following year, the site was occupied by the Syrian armed forces. In 1980, the fair’s board of directors called for the site to be evacuated, arguing that it could be completed within the next 3 years. However, in 1982 the Israeli invasion of Lebanon cancelled the board’s efforts and the prospect of one day seeing the site completed seemed to have been abandoned. In 1995 the fair was renamed the Rachid Karami International Fair and small-scale events and regional exhibitions were held on an anecdotal basis for a few years until the complete withdrawal of military forces from the site in 1998.
In the end, the Tripoli International Fair was never completed or officially inaugurated, and although it was close to completion, the built spaces were never fully used. Today, the site is in danger, a far cry from the dream of union promised by the Brazilian architect and the Lebanese government.
The Tripoli International Fair project
Oscar Niemeyer saw part of his project amputated at the beginning of the design phase, but he kept the idea of turning the International Fair into a museum of modernism. For the fair itself, Niemeyer chose to ignore the typology of independent pavilions, favouring the principle of a single building housing all the exhibitors. The result was a boomerang-shaped building, 750m long, 70m wide and 7m high, a large hall with a single flat roof made of reinforced-concrete, the Great Canopy, under which all the participants could be housed.
The whole site is home to some fifteen independent structures, often based on motifs already worked on by the Brazilian architect. The elbow-shaped building of the University of Brasilia, for example, is very similar in its use of space to the Great Canopy built in Tripoli. On the exhibition site, there is an experimental theatre in the shape of a dome, a form widely used by Niemeyer, notably for the museu nacional in Brasilia.
There is also the Lebanese pavilion, which uses an architectural vocabulary closer to the local vernacular, but is largely inspired by the portico construction principle of the Palacio Itamaraty (later used again for the Palazzo Mondadori in Italy).
At the far end of the complex, a raised ramp provides access to an open-air theatre and its acoustic shell. This ramp is surmounted by a concrete arch, a nod from Niemeyer to Enzo Saarinen and his Gateway Arch in Saint-Louis, creating a new point of vertical perspective within the horizontality of the site. This horizontality is felt right from the entrance to the complex, to the south of the Grande Canopée. The entrance portico is itself overhung by a large section of concrete over 100m long, which traces a line containing the horizon.
The project also includes a space museum buried under a mushroom-shaped building that doubles as a heliport. A panoramic restaurant atop a water tower, a children’s pavilion in the shape of a pleated pyramid, a housing museum and an open model residence. Particular attention was paid to the landscape, with water mirrors designed to reflect the architecture and open up a dialogue between the shapes of the buildings and the surrounding vegetation. But this modernist dream remains unfulfilled: the buildings are concrete skeletons devoid of any pulpit, the water basins are dry and the parks deserted.
The Tripoli International Fair project has failed, and the elliptical park is now totally disconnected from the urban fabric and isolated from the sea. The diverted highway cuts the fair off from the city, and it is now a huge walled-off area. The ambition to stimulate the city economically, to link it to the country and to make this fair a tool for building a modern society came to a definitive end with the outbreak of the civil war. These empty carcasses bear the scars of an abandoned past, the symbol of a lost and sometimes betrayed identity. Finally, in these almost ruins disconnected from the city, we find perhaps the purest expression of an unfinished society. A city where orange trees no longer blossom.
