tripoliFair

Created by the Spatial Studies Lab at Rice University, in cooperation with UNESCO's Regional Office in Beirut, this interactive web application documents the history, architecture, and legacy of the Rashid Karami International Fair in Tripoli, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and representing one of the most significant modernist urban projects in the Arab world. The platform brings together detailed visual archives, historical maps, and photographic records, each situated within the spatial and temporal context of the site's development, to produce a structured documentary resource for a landmark that remains largely inaccessible and understudied.

The platform's approach is archival and spatial. Primary source materials are organized to allow users to trace the evolution of the fair's architectural composition, its relationship to Tripoli's urban fabric, and the successive conditions the site has passed through since its conception in the 1960s. By anchoring visual and historical records to the site's spatial layout, the platform enables the examination of Niemeyer's design intentions alongside the physical and cultural transformations the fair has undergone, situating both within the broader history of mid-twentieth century urban planning and modernist architecture in the Arab world.

The platform serves historians, architects, researchers, and urban planners with a consolidated and spatially grounded record of a site whose architectural significance has long outpaced its documentation. For broader audiences, it provides an accessible entry point into the cultural and historical dimensions of a project that shaped Tripoli's identity and continues to carry weight within ongoing debates around architectural heritage, preservation, and urban memory in Lebanon.