Redefining Expo.

Transcending the notion of Expo as theme park, Expo 98 aims to leave Lisbon a genuine legacy of buildings and infrastructure. Steven Spier analyzes the programme and on the following pages describes the major pavilions.

Historically, Expo is a nineteenth-century creation that introduced people to new or exotic goods and lands while confirming the Western world's industrial, cultural, and economic superiority. At the end of the twentieth century, however, the assured superiority of the industrialized world is more problematic and the ubiquity and potency of media has made the world smaller if not virtual. To these changed cultural circumstances add the considerable expense to the host country and the increasing reluctance of participants to invest time and money in what is after all a temporary exhibition and there are many grounds for questioning the viability of the Expo tradition. Lisbon, though, replies definitively to all of these misgivings by making Expo 98 and its theme, 'The Oceans, a Heritage for the Future', the excuse for a large-scale urban transformation, as well as the opportunity to celebrate Portugal's geographical position while dispelling its historical legacy at the edge of Europe.

The site for Expo Urbe (of which the 60 hectare Expo 98 is the first stage), constitutes 340 hectares up to 600m wide with Skin of frontage along the lagoon called the Sea of Straw at the mouth of the Tagus River. The consensus from an ideas competition for the river zone held in 1988 was to reposition Lisbon as a city on the Atlantic Ocean. In a now familiar strategy, Lisbon is reclaiming its waterfront from the industrial uses that grew along it in the nineteenth century. This particular site on the north-eastern edge was especially important within the larger urban context, and indeed was chosen for redevelopment over two others, in spite of its being contaminated by the presence of a working oil refinery, to act as a counterbalance to the city's drift westward towards Belem.

Having chosen this forsaken part of Lisbon, the organizers of Expo considered precedents both positive (Barcelona) and negative (Seville in 1992 and London's Docklands). Barcelona has become the paradigm of a city that transformed itself and its image through the Olympics, though its political adroitness in gaining the support of the populace through local enhancements has been less seductive. Expo in Seville represented Lisbon's worst fear, where in spite of its achievements at the time, such as record-breaking participation and its environmental theme, the legacy is disappointing, the new airport and train station notwithstanding (AR June 1992). The diagnosis of Seville included its being just too small a city to generate its naively assumed metamorphosis into another Silicon Valley, the reliance on an Expo tradition of individual national pavilions, and its method of finance. Failures from Docklands were seen as its single use and lack of investment in significant transportation infrastructure.

Expo 98 has certainly taken to heart the importance of infrastructure. Open since March, the 13km long Vasco da Gama Bridge is only the second connection between the two halves of metropolitan Lisbon. Oriente Station by Santiago Calatrava is a major transport centre linking international and national rail links, a new metro line, a coach station, and ring roads and is well connected to the airport 3km away. The district has its own heating, cooling, and waste disposal system. Programmatically, the larger site will include housing, shopping, schools, and a hospital as well as company headquarters, hotels, and culture and leisure facilities. By 2020 it should have 25 000 inhabitants and 18 000 workers. An 80 hectare park in a city with little green space terminates the site to the north. To facilitate the success of the larger site the Lisbon Expo makes a distinction between permanent buildings which can be understood almost as infrastructure and demountable structures specifically for the duration of the event. The latter range from kiosks and restaurants to one of the two large exhibition halls, and some of them are very good. To keep clown the cost of nations participating and to avoid a collection of grandiloquent pavilions, the organizers have constructed two large modular buildings in which individual stands are erected. The one to the south will be demounted, while the one to the north (by Portuguese architects Antonio Barreiros Ferreira and Alberto Franca Doria) is a permanent exhibition centre. In total there are five main pavilions, two international areas, three buildings for shows and concerts, and a panaromic tower. Much emphasis is placed on the landscape design, drawing on Portuguese traditions such as mosaic paving and tiles. The Garcia de Orta gardens along the Tagus are planted with rare, exotic plants thematically linked to the Portuguese era of discoveries.

The site plan is fairly conventional, with two boulevards parallel to the train tracks and the coast, with nodes and cross axes to the river to the east where they are anchored by the permanent buildings, some of which will change their use after the Expo. An 11 000 seat multi-purpose hall, Utopia Pavilion, by SOM and Regino Cruz borders the axis from the train station, with the Expo Pavilion (which will become a shopping mall) between them. Bordering this axis to the south and on a corner of the Olivais Docks is the Portuguese Pavilion by Alvaro Siza. In the area of the Docks are the major pavilions, including Knowledge of the Seas by Carrilho da Graca, and of the Future by Paula Santos, Rui Ramos, and Miguel Guedes. Floating in the centre in pride of place is the Oceans Pavilion by Cambridge Seven and IDEA. Site boundaries are delineated by four gateways oriented to the cardinal points. The north entrance by Manuel Tainha serves those coming by car, the southern or sea entrance by Manuel Graca Dias and Egas Jose Vieira includes a tower from the refinery and will serve those coming by coach. These define the ends of the main axis. The western gateway by Daciano Costa is opposite the Oriente Station and is part of a commercial centre which includes two large towers. The Tagus entrance by Livia Tirone allows boat entrance. A VIP entrance for official delegations was designed by Catherine Harrington and occupies a high point with one of the few river vistas.

Much of the architecture and design at Expo 98 exhibits Portugal's own talents, mostly to good effect, and has given their architects the opportunity to do some unusually large-scale work. Just how referential to the theme or the site's history the architecture at an Expo should be is problematic. At least equal in importance to the individual architectural achievements of Expo 98 is Lisbon's larger ambition and the care with which it has proceeded. Though it commemorates the 500th anniversary of Vasco da Gama's journey to India around the Cape of Good Hope, its theme acknowledges the industrialized world's troubled relationship with the environment and appropriately rejects an Expo-style architecture of High-Tech, futuristic self-congratulation in favour of some fine buildings and the legacy of a considerable physical and cultural shift for Lisbon.