KNOWLEDGE & INNOVATION CENTER

TRIPOLI | LEBANON

RACHID KARAMI INTERNATIONAL FAIR
JUNE 2019

COMPETITION ENTRY FOR FOR THE TRIPOLI SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE REVIVAL OF OSCAR NEIMEYER’S INTERNATIONAL FAIR

The 100Ha site of the RKIF boasts a signature masterplan, similar in composition to that of Brasilia. The Fair and its shell structures, while unfinished, have become a quasi national monument, with spaces like the dome featuring in today’s popular culture.

The existing buildings on the KIC site are icons of modernism and the outermost elements of the Niemeyer Masterplan. For our proposal we respect and amplify this architectural gesture, extending the building along its structural gridlines. The narrow construction minimizes the building’s footprint, freeing up the landscape for public use. Old meets new in a marriage of structure, program, and circulation. At 356m long, the building’s central corridor is a spectacle of perspective running uninterrupted along the building’s louvers and columns, offering a comparably unique experience to the dome theatre.

In homage to the unfinished theatre, we propose to further bring the landscape to life with an inverted dome carved into the earth. The ground dips down around the existing building, bringing nature and light down to its basement level. The grand gesture of the dome is almost imperceptible from the ground, experienced from the lip of the basin, and along its soft slope, inviting visitors inside the building. The inverted earth dome becomes a living canvas of flora, alive and changing through the seasons.

The different phases of construction use a uniform language of vertical louvers, staggered and animated against the internal program of the buildings. Sculptural, they bring dynamic perspective to the vast site. A modernist dance with concrete from the 70s today becomes a play of light, speed, movement and information, ushering a new digital and economic future for the Tripoli and Lebanon of tomorrow.