Project Description
Aga Khan Award for Architecture Winner 2022
Master Jury Citation
“The renovation of the Niemeyer Guest House is an inspiring tale of architecture’s capacity for repair, at a time of dizzying, entangled crisis around the world, and in Lebanon in particular, as the country faces unprecedented political, socio-economic and environmental collapse. Located on the outskirts of Tripoli – one of the oldest and most beautiful port-cities, once renowned for its craft but today ravaged by extreme poverty, migration and lack of public space – the rehabilitation of the Guest House is part of the Rachid Karami International Fair (RKIF), the unfinished masterpiece of the architect Oscar Niemeyer.
Commissioned to showcase the young nation, the fair’s construction was halted by the outbreak of civil war in 1975, and subsequently abandoned to disrepair, dispute and abortive competitions, while continuing to spark the imagination of artists and architects in Lebanon and around the world. The Niemeyer Guest House renovation is a hopeful first burgeoning of a meaningful revival of the fair’s structures, modelling exemplary restoration of Modernist heritage while inviting a new public life for the future of this unique site.
The project has been carried out with great precision, its high quality revealing the exhaustive research the architects undertook. A sensitive understanding of the fair’s specific architectural language is carefully deployed to revive this important architectural and urban heritage. The architects’ particular concern for self-containment as well as success in crafting custom details that can be removed is admirable in ensuring reversibility of use for the structure in the future.
In this carefully crafted space, reverence for the “hand” is perpetuated through the proposed programme: an active wood workshop sustaining small-scale carpentry and reviving the city’s history of craft. The project regenerates much-needed micro-economies and advocates inclusiveness, inviting the surrounding community into its heart. It reveals how paramount it is today to consider architectural rehabilitation and socio-economic revival as an indivisible whole.
It is our hope that this award can celebrate the collaborative work behind this project and become the first step towards exemplary, careful rehabilitation and adaptive reuse for the rest of the fair site.”
Amale Andraos and Sibel Bozdogan (co-chairs), Nada Al Hassan, Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, Kader Attia, Lina Ghotmeh, Francis Kéré, Anne Lacaton, Nader Tehrani
Project Data
Program
Wood Industry Platform & Design Hub
Build-Up Area
1,900 sqm
Location
Rachid Karami International Fair, Tripoli, Lebanon
Status
Built
Year
2018