Of the Lebanon Museum, for example, nothing remains but the perimeter wall, a raised central floor and what would have been the steel structure for the glass facade. These three elements produce a space where the various geometrical forms, shadow and light become the protagonists in a masterful dance. Here, framing is everything. Everything is light and dimension. The façade wall and the arches suffice to affirm an interiority and an exteriority, an inside and an outside. The multiplicity of paths, views and depths of field contribute to creating an unexpected sensory event.

From this space we advance toward the Experimental Theatre.

The dome is the most surprising element in the entire design. Seen from outside, it is "classic Niemeyer," comparable to his design for the French Communist Party's Headquarters in Paris through the impact of its shape and size. Inside, however, we discover a Brutalist work of art. Hanging randomly from the ceiling, the concrete vault’s steel frames alter the reading of this space from the domain of architecture to situate the visitor in a form of spatial performance: one has the impression of secretly entering an enlarged or even a gigantic Merz-like igloo. The sound also amplifies this experience’s performative character: an echo returns any utterance with a few seconds of delay and modulates sounds as though a thousand voices were being layered over the original sound.

The helipad is located just opposite the auditorium. This other concrete structure slightly evokes the works of Pieluigi Nervi. It has now been turned into a belvedere that is accessed by a spiral staircase from where the commanding view from what ought to have been a helicopter’s landing and take-off point is absolutely breath taking. Even more so than from the site’s entrance, we can here take measure of this vast empty space in the heart of Tripoli, to which the checkered subdivisions of the 1980s have been added. As soon as one feels the pressure of the urban fabrics surrounding the site, the utter strangeness of the existence of the International Fairground site becomes evident.

In the northern part, the monumental arch leads the visitor to the outdoor amphitheatre.

Flanked by a pit, the rectangular shaped stage hosts a proscenium of carved concrete in its centre. The stands, however, comprise white plastic seats that despite their interesting staggered arrangement signify little in this setting. At first, they reminded me of the seating arrangement in the stands at Naples’s San Paolo stadium. But above all, their industrial character, the clearly legible function, and the small size of the only elements that are not concrete, bring me back to reality, erasing the slightest trace of abstraction. The seats are the exit ticket from the spectacle of this world of dreamlike forms that I attended. Strangely, they weave a link with the site’s history and why this space has remained suspended in time.

While the fairground never went into operation on account of events that incited a bloodbath in Lebanon since 1975, paradoxically, unlike other unfinished projects in Beirut, such as the Murr Tower Hotel or the cinema at the Place des Martyres, no trace of bullets or bombs shells reminds us that this site had been transformed into a military base during the years the Civil War raged. The Fairground is not a ruin, but rather a frozen image. Besides, the perfectly manicured lawns and bushes cut in parallelepipeds clearly indicate that someone continues to take care of this image.

The Fairground is disturbing, and yet remains strangely powerful. First and foremost because the site breaks the mold with any form of urban “normality.” This is no wasteland, no construction site, not even an archaeological vestige. The Fairground has no function and currently serves no purpose. It does not respect any economic or productive rationale. This is a “useless space” and alone for that reason, the site has become a space of resistance. Its sheer lack of utility and use also amplifies this feeling of emptiness. And if the Fair site strikes us as being powerful today, it is also because it is a big void.

Now, emptiness by definition is somewhere laden with potential: the revelation, the transformation and the protection of these voids are equally strategies, projects, or actions that these spaces offer to those who visit them.

Something purely architectural makes this experience unique, though I do not believe it is related to Niemeyer’s imprint, of whom I have never been a fervent admirer.

From its beginnings, Manfredo Tafuri beheld two currents in the modern movement: “invariably we will find over and again the same dialectical opposition between those who seek to extend into the depths of the real in order to know values and confront miseries, and those who long to project beyond reality, to build new realities from scratch, to found new values, and to erect new symbols.”

Which is another way of saying that one could practically divide the moderns into two groups: “realists” and “surrealists,” and Oscar Niemeyer is unquestionably one of the major representatives of the “modern surrealists.” I, however, have always been more drawn to the architects and architectures of the first branch. Transgressing orthodox modernist aesthetic doctrines and overthrowing hegemonic cultural models, Niemeyer’s work privileged invention and affirmed spectacle, luxury, and pleasure as legitimate architectural pursuits.

Influenced, as were the Moderns of his generation, by the fine arts, the Brazilian confuses architecture and sculpture. The auditorium in the form of an open book at the University of Constantine, the egg-shaped dome of the Stade du 5 Juillet in Algiers, the “volcanoes” in Le Havre or the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro in the shape of flying saucer are all objects, carved monuments. These objects are not only offered for contemplation, but also for visual consumption.

The confrontation of these sculptural objects with a particular usage is a complex exercise, which I rarely find successful. The impossible dialogue between these geometrical shapes and everyday life is routinely expressed via the confrontation between the routine use of an object ––a chair, a table, a fridge as the case may be–– and the volume it contains.

Architecture-sculpture requires total control over the eventual and natural evolution of things, and these projects experience great difficulty adapting to change and to the passing of time.

The architectures on display at the Rachid Karamé Fairground are not subject to this confrontation, and thanks to their curious history have never been.

To paraphrase Louis Kahn; “Form has neither contour nor dimensions. (...) Form, is the "what", while design is the “how.” The form is impersonal. Design derives from a creator. Conception is an act linked to circumstances.”

As I see it, The International Fairground in Tripoli is Niemeyer's most impactful work precisely because it is no longer the act of a creator, but has become, through its very incompleteness, impersonal: a matter of pure form. My experience at the complex curiously reminded me of the “Great Cretto,” a colossal concrete labyrinth covering ten hectares by the painter Alberto Burri, erected in memory of the old city of Gibellina in Sicily that was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1968, erected in the 1980s and as yet unfinished. Rambling through the network of cracks that have become the alleyways