A Beirut design fair has made a comeback after Lebanon’s economic meltdown forced a four-year hiatus, with some pieces on display in spaces devastated in a deadly 2020 port explosion. We Design Beirut, which ended Sunday, exhibited work from more than 150 designers and artisans for four days in several locations in the Lebanese capital. The fair aimed “to showcase the diversity of Lebanese design despite the country’s difficulties”, said Mariana Wehbe, who launched the event with industrial designer Samer Alameen.
The annual fair kicked off in 2010 but hit pause in 2019, when Lebanon’s economy went into free fall, in what the World Bank would call one of the planet’s worst economic crises in recent history. The event was set to return in October last year but was postponed again after the Zionist entity launched its military campaign in Gaza. “We are trying to make Beirut a center for design and creation again,” said curator William Wehbe, not related to Mariana, speaking from the capital’s luxurious Villa Audi, one of the fair venues.
Designers and creative workers have been among those Lebanese leaving for better prospects abroad, some spurred by the lack of primary materials or after their workshops were destroyed in the 2020 port explosion, he added. ‘Risk of extinction’ On August 4, 2020, a catastrophic explosion of poorly stored ammonium nitrate at Beirut’s port killed more than 220 people, injured at least 6,500 and laid waste to swathes of the .
