Böcker av Giovanna Silva

In the early 1960s Oscar Niemeyer designed a complex in Tripoli that was intended to serve as a large exhibition centre and to be part of the Tripoli International Fair. The location used to be an immense?/vast orchard, full of oranges. Now here lies an abandoned complex of 15 structures, including?/?which include an outdoor theater, a concert hall, an atrium, an arch, a heliport and lodgings. The site is an example of futurist modernist architecture, unfortunately led to decay. The project was never finished due to technical problems, incoherent bud-gets and the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. Photographer Giovanna Silva visited the site and documented what is left, capturing the atmosphere, the fading colours, the leftover stones but nonetheless showing us the grandeur of what was once the centre of Tripoli's architecture.

Giovanna Silva captured the long gone glory of Palmyra, a legendary hotel in Baalbek, Lebanon. She leads us through old and charming rooms that breathe out the once decadent soul of the hotel. Pale colours, wall cracks, the smell of old wooden furni-ture and Persian rugs take you on a journey into the past. At the same time, we feel the current presence of war and decay. Out of the windows of the Palmyra one can see the ruins of the ancient Roman temple of Heliopolis. For this reason lots of tourists and academics visited the hotel since its opening in 1874. The hotel has not closed for a day since that time. Its popularity attracted international figures such as Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Jean Cocteau and Charles de Gaulle, but due to impact of the war on the border with Syria and an economic depression in general, the hotel now stands empty.