Located in northern Lebanon, the Rachid Karameh International Fair of Tripoli was designed in 1962 by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer on a 70-hectare site located between the historic centre of Tripoli and the Al Mina port. The main building of the fair consists of a huge covered hall in the shape of a boomerang of 750 metres by 70 metres, a flexible space for countries to install exhibitions. The fair was the flagship project of Lebanon's modernization policy in the 1960s. The close collaboration between Oscar Niemeyer, the architect of the project, and Lebanese engineers gave rise to a remarkable example of exchange between different continents. In terms of scale and wealth of formal expression, it is one of the major representative works of 20th century modern architecture in the Arab Near East.

Brief synthesis The Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli has been erected in Tripoli, the second largest city in Lebanon and the capital of the Northern Governorate, and was designed by Oscar Niemeyer between 1962-1967 and built until 1975. The main building of the International Fair consists of a huge oblong covered exhibition space, the Grand Canopy, under which the exhibition pavilions of several countries could be freely installed. The entrance to the International Fair complex begins at the southern end of the Grand Canopy: a vast ramp leads to a raised portico from where the visitors can discover the entire composition. A series of educational, recreational and cultural facilities were immersed within a “Brazilian Tropical Garden” and connected by water pools and pedestrian passages. In the northern part, a ceremonial ramp leads to the outdoor amphitheatre, surmounted by a monumental arch forming a symbolic gateway to modernity and a landmark of the city of Tripoli. The use of traditional elements of local architecture was intended to express the aspirations of the newly independent Arab peoples to take part in the universal process of modernisation. For its scale, its daring structural solutions, its architectural expression, its vast modernist public spaces and gardens, its links to post-independence identity buildings, and despite the deterioration of most of its structures and the endangered integrity of several of its components due to the ageing of the concrete, the Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli is one of the most representative works of modern architecture of the 20th century in the Arab States. Criterion (ii): The Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli expresses in an exceptional way the successful integration of Brazilian modernist concepts into the context of the Arab Near East in Tripoli and is a vivid example of cultural exchange in the field of architecture. The collaboration between Oscar Niemeyer, the architect of the complex…