Lisbon Expo 98.

The 1998 Lisbon Expo has been far less heralded than for instance Seville's in 1992. Compared to that, it will he a relatively modest affair, without macho contests between national pavilions or huge amounts of hype. Perhaps modesty is wise. Seville's Expo ground is a sorry affair now, with empty pavilions, tatty infrastructure and gap sites; the science park project never took off, and only the regional government of Andalucia occupies the buildings in the way intended.

Lisbon has taken a much more robust attitude: what is built for the Fair must become part of the city. The site is a long strip on the Tagus, or rather what the Portuguese call the Sea of Straw - the lagoon which shelters the city and provided the calm waters from which Vasco da Gama and his followers set sail to explore the globe. The place was occupied by outdated industrial uses, for instance a refinery, the national oil-reserve tank farm and a defunct rubbish disposal works. These could be moved, and a new piece of city brought down to the water. This was an opportunity not to be lost; apart from the mid-eighteenth-century splendour of the Praca do Commercio in the centre of the Marquis de Pombal's reconstruction of the old city after the famous earthquake, Lisbon is almost entirely cut off from the Tagus by nineteenth-century industrial buildings, docks and railways. A new local centre could be created and the river opened up for the enjoyment of all inhabitants.

Infrastructure associated with the site is much more impressive and permanent than usual for an Expo. A new bridge sweeps 15km over the lagoon to make an additional much needed connection between the top and bottom of the country. The site will have district heating and cooling and a centralised pneumatic waste disposal system. A big new railway station designed by Santiago Calatrava will be a multi-modal transport exchange and the main gateway to the Expo site with connections to the metro, new roads and the airport (3km away). New commercial buildings and housing will bc associated with this, and housing is being built on the site itself; initially it will be used by Expo staff, but then offered for rent. A large park will terminate the site to the north.

The biggest building is the 10 000 seat multipurpose auditorium (every city needs one these days), designed by Regino Cruz and SOM, who have used laminated timber in a not entirely overstretched attempt to evoke the ribs and structure of a caravel - the vessel with which the Portuguese explored the world; externally, its smooth silver skin will make the thing look like a huge marine bug. Next door is the complex that will become the Lisbon Exhibition Centre after the end of the Expo, designed by Antonio Barteiros Ferreira and Alberto Franca Doria. During the fair, it will house exhibits from participating countries, and there will be another (demountable) structure by Manuel Salgado, Marino Fei and Pierluigi Cerri for the same purpose at the other end of the site. So all national exhibits (except the Portuguese, in a special pavilion by Alvaro Siza) will be in effect interior design displays. The aim of the strategy is to ensure that practicable buildings result after the show (the demountable one will be re-erected in a provincial city) and to avoid ending up with useless tatty pavilions a la Seville. But there will be a price to pay, and although sites are being offered free so that exhibitors can concentrate resources on the content of their displays, it will be difficult to prevent the halls seeming like large trade shows.

The theme of the fair is 'The oceans, a heritage for the future', and one of the most striking buildings will be the large 'Oceanarium' by American aquarium architect Peter Chermayeff in which four displays of marine ecologies from different climatic zones surround a huge central tank showing life in the great oceans. The peripheral tanks are shaded by partly obscured glass suspended from masts, and the building is set on an island in the dock which forms the centre of the Expo layout.

In contrast to the big safe international names and staid buildings will be lively designs for cafes, bars, street furniture and landscape interventions by less well-known and younger Portuguese architects. By its nature, much of this work has not started yet, but much of the perceived effect of the show, which opens on 22 May next year, will depend on it.

Romanian revival

Romania is taking a keen interest in its own past; not the immediate past of course, but the golden years of the '20s and '30s. The modern architecture of that period is alive and well, and the subject of study as well as of a new-found architectural confidence. After five decades of cultural deprivation, the revival of interest in Modernism - in all its guises - is of paramount importance in the recovery of the nation and in its representation in the wider world. There has been a fundamental weakness in our knowledge of the avant-garde in Romania (and indeed in many other parts of Central and Eastern Europe) due to a lack of scholarship, research or even the most obvious kind of publicity. This paucity of information has led to much confusion about what was there, and what is left. Thankfully, from journals and paintings to individual buildings and estates, the artefacts are resurfacing. Romania was certainly not out on a limb. Its involvement with this Modern Movement in the arts was vital, comprehensive and crucial from a cultural point of view. After years in the wilderness Romanian architects, artists and historians are now looking back at this international era. Romanian architecture in the interwar years was dominated by two major influences, both French. The strong links with Paris meant that many architects trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and individual Romanian artists played a key role in the development of the modern arts.

A major exhibition Between Avant-garde and Modernism held in Bucharest in 1993 and partly sponsored by the Soros Foundation covered all the arts of the period between 1920 and the late 1940s, and included cultural icons and information on the major personalities of the period. It was a revelation and one that focused on Romania's wider European connections.

A major section of the Bucharest exhibition was devoted to Romanian Modernist architecture and it is this section that is now in Western Europe. It was shown at ETH, Zurich and recently at the RIBA and contains some impressive material including original drawings, a number of fine large-scale models and a selection of period photographs, somewhat faded perhaps, but emphasising the strength of the country's Modern examples by Janco, Creanga and the remarkably versatile George Matei Cantacuzino. His splendid Hotel Bellona, a functional object with steamship features and the subject of a vast model in the exhibition, was part of an estate of villas and spa buildings at the Black Sea resort of Efirie. Cantacuzino, a Beaux Arts graduate, advocated the creation of an architecture of compromise, traditional elements combined with a modern architecture, which, he wrote, 'seeks its own laws at the source of the useful, of the constructive and of the social idea. It does not run counter to aspirations of our architecture', he continued, although clearly it was an importation. However, the Modern Movement's early phase had been enriched by the presence of a number of Romanian artists whose impact has been widely acknowledged.

These include the immensely influential sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) who left Romania as early as 1904, but whose 30m high gilded 'Endless Column' was set up at Targu Jiu in 1937 and is still here. The original inventor of the Zurich-based Dada Group Tristan Tzara was also Romanian, as was his close collaborator the architect Marcel Janco, who became one of the main exponents of Modernist architecture in Bucharest. Janco, whose work is widely represented in the exhibition, collaborated with his brother Iuliu Ianco to produce a number of 'Cubistic' houses from 1929 onwards. Flat-roofed cubic International Style Modernism soon caught on with the young avantgarde architects, many of whom published their own journals and became involved with artists from many disciplines. The most prolific of these modern architects was undoubtedly Horia Creanga, whose ARO apartment block (1929-31) set the standard for many later apartment buildings by other architects along the main boulevards of Bucharest. Fortunately, many of these blocks remain today and efforts are being made to gradually refurbish them and the other Modern examples throughout the city. But the current mood is not one of conservation, rather of continuity and salvation.

The Romanians have found an important link to their own twentieth-century cultural legacy. They are proud of its depth and bemused at its remains. They now wish to build upon it. This opens up a whole new area of theoretical and practical questions as there is not an identifiable avant-garde anymore. Modernism is clearly not a self-lighting candle snuffed out when the Fascists took control and rekindled when artistic freedom returned. However, it is clearly a key factor in Romania's new cultural mood.