While the fair’s individual elements hold great aesthetic value and demonstrate high structural technique, Niemeyer’s proposal was based on principles of unity and equilibrium. Mired by political turmoil and financial fallout, the promise of the whole has not yet come to be. With its structures under threat of collapse and development proposals seeking to overwrite the vision of Niemeyer, the project was placed on the World Monument Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites in 2006. The renamed Rachid Karimi International Fair was nominated to UNESCO’s World Heritage Tentative List and a conservation management plan was initiated with support from the Getty Foundation in 2019.
International Fair of Tripoli, Lebanon. Plan, section, and edge detail, 1967. Courtesy of the Arab Center for Architecture.