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Architecture Rewriting History: the Portuguese Pavilion, Architecture, and Site-Planning at Expo ‘98
| As a mega-project involving creation of entirely new, signature “mini-city” in Lisbon, Expo ’98 was designed to showcase Lisbon’s and Portugal’s modernity, and its suitability for more prominent roles in emerging European and global economic orders. Almost all cultural production at the fair, including music, dance, celebration, architecture, and site planning, sought to erase older perceptions of Portugal as a rural, peasant society, and to present a more contemporary image of a nation that is modern, urban, European, middle and upper class, youthful, and state of the art, or even an international leader, in contemporary science and technology. Within the Expo, architecture played an especially crucial role in shaping overall images, not only of the fair itself, but also of the new futuristic “Expo-Urbe” mini-city that would remain afterward. This presentation focuses on the role of architecture in establishing Lisbon as a “post- imperial” city. Special attention will be given to Alvaro Siza Viera’s Pavilion of Portugal, the signature architectural showpiece of Expo’98. The dramatic modernist building placed at the epicenter of the large site and associated spectacle was not only designed by the dean of Portuguese architects, but operated as a ceremonial node in hosting all events associated with the Portuguese state, including official commemorations, speeches by elected officials, and receptions for visiting heads of state. The contents of the pavilion were designed by the nation’s official, high profile Commission for the Commemoration of the Portuguese Discoveries, and displayed themes that – as with the architecture – were designed to break with older images the country’s past. Portugal’s conflicted and often violent history as an imperial power, and the strongly rural, peasant past of much of the country, were both rewritten in the new pavilion, in the way it represented both the historical and the contemporary nation. Multi-media presentations inside the building also attempted to chart a new post-imperial narrative, emphasizing Portugal’s role as an adventuresome and even generous cultural broker in linking the world’s cultures, and as a promoter of ground-breaking scientific exploration and discovery. This paper examines the very mixed and deeply contested reception of the pavilion and its contents, and of the wider architecture and urban planning for the fair, that pleased few and prompted bitter debates in the national parliament and in the media, and elucidates the issues that provoked controversy and for whom.
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