Panorama of the Tripoli International Fair from the Lebanese pavilion in the early morning.
In 1963, the architect Oscar Niemeyer imagines the Tripoli international fair. The project is bogged down in the vicissitudes of Lebanese politics. In 1975, it came to an end. The buildings are built, there are barely a few cables to hide, windows to install, a little paint to apply here and there ... And war breaks out. A year later, the Syrian militias took possession of the premises and remained there until the end of the conflict. The buildings are looted of everything that can be, doors, windows, tiles, cables etc. etc. But they miraculously escaped the bombardments and their structures remained preserved. The concrete of the various structures, which make up the site, is bare. Architectures become brutalist sculptures.
Nowadays, the huge site is mostly deserted. We sink into it as in a dream, far from the bustle of Tripoli, Lebanon's second city, grazed by the caress of ghosts prowling between retrofuturistic pyramids, sinusoidal arches of imperial proportions, oriental palaces revisited in a modernist style and other concrete flowers from the imagination of the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. The stray dogs, the few Sunday joggers and the skateboarders who snap their boards in the silence of the large empty pools only add to the strangeness ambient.
The buildings were surrounded by a network of basins whose water was supposed to offer the architectures their narcissistic reflections. The pools have never been filled.
But in october 2018, the day before I drove to Tripoli, a violent storm broke out and filled the basins with rainwater. The architectural landscapes of the site played once again with Niemeyer's dreams.
The visual essay was published in M Le magazine du Monde in august 2019 with words by Isabelle Reigner.
View of the dried up pools from the heliport. Riders appreciate their smooth and slippery surface, as evidenced by the skid marks on motorcycles or cars.
The dome is a recurring element of Niemeyer's architecture, found in Paris and Brasilia. This was to house the experimental theater of the fair.
The monumental arch at the entrance to the open-air theater. It appears as a door and a signal.
Two workers and a ladder at the bottom of the arch.
The stage and the entrance of the open-air theater of the fair.
A tag on the open-air theater stage.
The great arch offers some openings towards the sky. Niemeyer wanted their shape to be inspired by a female gender.