Overview

“Lisboa Expo’98” took place on the eastern riverfront of Lisbon, Portugal, from May 22 to September 30, 1998. Organized by Parque Expo 98 SA, it was a specialized exhibition under the second categorization system of the International Exhibitions Bureau (Bureau International des Expositions, BIE), with the theme “Oceans, Heritage for the Future.” It commemorated the 500th anniversary of Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India and coincided with the International Year of the Ocean proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly. The Expo welcomed 146 countries and 14 international organizations and recorded 10,128,204 visits.

Origins and the bid

The idea for the Expo emerged in 1989 within the Commission for the Commemoration of the Portuguese Discoveries, as part of the program marking Vasco da Gama’s first sea voyage to India in 1498 and Pedro Álvares Cabral’s arrival in Brazil in 1500. On June 23, 1992, Lisbon was chosen as host over a competing bid from Toronto, and the BIE General Assembly recognized the Expo on June 8, 1994. The public company Parque Expo 98, created in 1993, was put in charge of both the exhibition and the regeneration of its district.

Urban design scholar Patricia Simões Aelbrecht, drawing on the archives of Parque Expo and the BIE, describes the candidacy as a national project. It was presented to the BIE in 1989 as an initiative of the Portuguese government, which formed a working group with the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Commerce and Tourism, Transport and Culture, the city halls of Lisbon and Loures, and technical consultants. Toronto, bidding for the second time, had a more developed proposal, but Aelbrecht reports that the BIE saw it as little more than a real estate project. Lisbon’s strengths were its plan for post-Expo use, strong political support, its site and its theme. She adds a critical note: the celebration of the Discoveries helped replace memories of a derelict industrial landscape with memories of a glorious empire.

The Expo also became a centerpiece of city planning. Lisbon had lost almost a fifth of its residents in a decade, falling from 807,900 in 1981 to 663,400 in 1991, and the Strategic Plan for Lisbon, approved in June 1992 under Mayor Jorge Sampaio, set out to win them back and to make Lisbon the “Atlantic capital of Europe.” The plan counted the Expo among its major projects, alongside Lisbon’s year as European City of Culture in 1994 and the new crossing of the Tagus, as a chance to integrate the city’s neglected eastern side with its center and waterfront and to build facilities for technological research.

Theme and subthemes

The organizers wanted the theme to reach beyond the historical commemoration. Oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The theme was developed through four subthemes: knowledge of the seas and ocean resources, the oceans and the planet’s equilibrium, the oceans and leisure, and the oceans as a source of artistic inspiration. According to the organizer, the theme was present in every part of the grounds, and water was the Expo’s key element. The BIE notes that the Independent World Commission on the Oceans presented its final report at the Portugal Pavilion.

The site

Organizers chose a run-down industrial zone in eastern Lisbon at the end of 1990, in the Cabo Ruivo-Beirolas area of the city’s riverside zone, where the plan also placed a new home for the Lisbon International Fair (FIL). Planners called the Expo the catalyst for the largest urban regeneration program ever carried out in Portugal, on a site five minutes from the airport, with direct motorway access and a new station served by international trains, the metro, buses, trams and taxis. Preparing it meant decontaminating soil, cleaning the Trancão River and removing a slaughterhouse, refinery fuel depots and an area of precarious housing. Parque Expo 98 led a regeneration program covering about 340 hectares and some five kilometers of riverfront, of which roughly 70 hectares formed the exhibition grounds. Public works included the Vasco da Gama Bridge across the Tagus, which opened on March 29, 1998, and the Gare do Oriente station by Santiago Calatrava.

The land itself made the project possible. According to Aelbrecht, the site offered about 300 hectares of uninhabited land, all of it owned by the Portuguese state, with great landscape value and few neighbors. Alongside the slaughterhouse and fuel depots, it held a gas plant, storage containers from the Port of Lisbon, a military depot and waste and sewage treatment facilities, and no conflicting interests stood in the way. To finish the Expo within four years, the government set up Parque Expo as a state-funded company that, according to its organizers, avoided the need for a public inquiry and was not subject to ordinary legislation or to supervision by City Hall.

The fenced grounds stretched about 2 kilometers along the river and had four public gates: the North Gate by Manuel Tainha, the Sea Gate by Manuel Graça Dias and Egas José Vieira, the Sun Gate by Daciano Costa and the Tagus Gate by Lívia Tirone. Almost half of all visits came in through the Sun Gate. The gates opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 3 a.m., or at 5 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from the second month on. A free shuttle ran continuously between the Sea, Sun and North gates, and parking offered 13,300 spaces for cars and motor homes, 743 for buses, 1,043 for motorcycles and 65 for visitors with disabilities.

Pavilions and international participation

The Oceans Pavilion, designed by Peter Chermayeff, was the largest aquarium in Europe when it opened, with about 200 marine species. Álvaro Siza Vieira designed the Portugal Pavilion with its thin canopy, which won that year’s Valmor Prize. Other landmarks included the Knowledge of the Seas Pavilion, the Future Pavilion, the Virtual Reality Pavilion with its “Oceânia” experience, the Utopia Pavilion by Regino Cruz, the Nautical Exhibition, the Water Gardens, the Garcia de Orta Gardens and the 145-meter Vasco da Gama Tower, linked to the nautical exhibition by a cable car.

The grounds were divided into areas for official participants: International North, International South, International Organizations, and National Organizations and Companies. Official participants occupied 224 exhibition modules with more than 72,500 square meters of covered space, not counting the Portugal and European Union pavilions, and the organizer charged no rent for the pavilions. It called the Expo the most international exhibition held up to that time. National organizations included the Azores, Madeira, the Portuguese Communities and the trade agency ICEP, and among the corporate exhibits, Microsoft showed Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester.

Culture and entertainment

The cultural program counted 1,890 different temporary shows in 4,877 performances on 17 stages, and the three permanent shows drew 8.7 million spectators in 1,908 performances. The multimedia show “Acqua Matrix” played on the Olivais Dock, using the water and the Oceanário as its setting, and the parade “Peregrinação” brought together 11 large machines, 19 smaller vehicles and 333 performers. The main stage at Sony Plaza held 235 sessions for about 2.3 million spectators, and the Promenade stage hosted a Portuguese guitar festival every Thursday at midnight. The street theater company Royal de Luxe built a “Rhinocéros” for the Expo.

The Luís de Camões Theater, designed by Manuel Salgado and Marino Fei, hosted opera and national day performances in 82 sessions. The BIE also mentions two side festivals, the 100 Days Festival and the Dive into the Future festival. Official guests included 38 heads of state and 35 prime ministers or deputy prime ministers.

Visitors and services

Two years before opening, organizers expected 10 million visitors, mainly from Spain and Portugal. The four gates counted 10,128,204 visits. The organizer’s introduction rounds the figure to about 11 million visitors, and the BIE reports more than 10 million. Social groups accounted for 318,750 visitors, 252,471 of them in school groups under an agreement with the Ministry of Education.

Information desks answered 1,982,589 requests, an average of 15,019 a day, 61 percent of them from Portuguese visitors. Medical teams assisted 43,705 people, staff handled 3,479 cases of lost persons, 2,044 of them children, and the lost-and-found service received 24,699 reports. A volunteer program chose 1,266 volunteers from 14,000 applicants for 14 tasks, in groups that served five weeks each between May 15 and September 30. The Children’s Space, a paid service opened on June 10, 1998, welcomed 7,066 children aged 3 to 10. Visitors with disabilities could borrow one of 80 wheelchairs, all of them in constant use, and use Braille materials, audio recordings and sign language interpreters on request.

Mascot, logo and media

The official mascot, Gil, was created by painter António Modesto and sculptor Artur Moreira and chosen from 309 designs. Its name, proposed by a primary school student in Barrancos and selected from 765 suggestions, recalls Gil Eanes, the navigator who rounded Cape Bojador in 1434. Augusto Tavares Dias designed the logo, which symbolizes the sea and the sun, after winning a 1993 competition with 1,288 entries, and Nuno Rebelo composed the official music, “Pangea.”

According to the organizer, it was the first international exhibition covered by its own television channel, radio station, daily newspaper and news agency. TeleEXPO broadcast 1,612 hours, 370 of them on RTP2; the Expo’s radio produced 1,304 hours for Portugal and 1,015 for the rest of the world; the EXPO news agency issued 4,105 stories; and the daily “Diário da EXPO” printed 17.1 million copies over the 132 days. Accreditation requests came from 6,312 foreign journalists from 88 countries and 5,204 Portuguese journalists.

Publications

The organizer’s publications included the “Guia Oficial” (Official Guide), edited by Rui Cardoso and released in May 1998 in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French editions, and a youth guide by António Torrado. Each thematic pavilion had its own catalog: Utopia, Portugal, Knowledge of the Seas, Future and Oceans. Book series included “98 Mares,” with 98 volumes, “De A a Z,” “Exposições Universais” and “Monografias do Pavilhão do Futuro.” In September 1998 the organizer added “Memória da Exposição” (Record of the Exposition), “O Livro Verde da EXPO’98” (The Green Book) and “Espectáculos Permanentes” (Permanent Shows).

Legacy

After the Expo, the site became Parque das Nações, a mixed-use district of housing, offices, shops and attractions that is now home to more than 28,000 residents. The Oceans Pavilion continues as the Oceanário, the Utopia Pavilion became today’s Altice Arena, which hosted the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, the Future Pavilion became the Lisbon casino, and the Portugal Pavilion is now used by the University of Lisbon. The North International Area gave way to the new halls of the Lisbon International Fair (FIL), and the Sun Gate became the Vasco da Gama shopping center.

Urban design scholar Patricia Simões Aelbrecht argues that Lisbon’s main innovation was to make the master plan itself the Expo’s legacy. A Parque Expo team led by architect and planner João Vassalo Rosa studied Expo 1986 Vancouver and Expo 1988 Brisbane, whose modular pavilions could be sold and reassembled; Expo 1992 Seville, whose single-use site showed what to avoid; and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, which proved the value of urban design. The plan worked in two phases, first the Expo and then a mixed-use neighborhood, and organized public space along four axes, including a pedestrian riverfront and the tree-lined Alameda dos Oceanos as the district’s spine. Temporary pavilions used 16-by-16-meter modules. Architectural historians Gaia Caramellino, Alessandro De Magistris and Federico Deambrosis call the Expo a “pretext” for a new metropolitan sub-center.

Aelbrecht details how the plan worked. Transport projects already in Lisbon’s strategic plan, including an expanded airport, new roads toward Spain, a second bridge over the Tagus and more public transport, were brought forward by the Expo. Economic anchors were meant to keep the district alive afterward: an intermodal station, an exhibition center, the Oceanarium, a multipurpose pavilion, parks, a hospital and a university, with housing north and south of a mixed-use center. Besides the riverfront and the Alameda dos Oceanos, the plan’s axes included a public axis running inland from the river past the station, the shopping center and the main square, Rossio dos Olivais, and Avenida D. João II, the only road for heavy traffic. Building density fell from west to east toward the river, and the main public buildings stood on the edges of the site.

Vassalo Rosa told Aelbrecht that the public spaces were designed for legibility, a physical relationship with the river and integration with the surrounding city. They took many forms, enclosed, covered, open to the sky or fully open, and used traditional Portuguese stone, wood and grass, with references to medieval, classical and modern precedents. Permanent buildings were meant to carry the memory of the event: the Knowledge of the Seas Pavilion, for example, was adapted as a science museum. The financial plan aimed at zero cost, with the investment repaid within 20 years through sales of land and pavilions to private investors and developers. Costs ran higher than predicted, although, according to Aelbrecht, the event itself was mostly paid for.

The model also has critics. Aelbrecht notes that the railway line between Parque das Nações and the older neighborhoods to the west, crossed by nine underpasses, came to be felt as a barrier, partly because social housing on the western side had made integration difficult from the start. Because the project was meant to pay for itself through land sales, critics argue that it produced a largely middle- and upper-income district, among the most expensive in Lisbon. Parque Expo meanwhile became a planning consultancy: it took charge of 10 of the 28 cities in Portugal’s Polis urban regeneration program and advised Expo 2010 Shanghai, which in Aelbrecht’s view followed the Lisbon model most closely.

Aelbrecht argues that Lisbon came to be seen as a third model of Expo design, after the models she associates with Expo 1889 Paris and Expo 1958 Brussels: the Expo as a catalyst of urban renewal. The BIE, she writes, strongly advised later organizers to build on it and to visit the site. Parque Expo surveys found residents, workers and visitors largely satisfied, above all with the public spaces and public art, and by around 2011 the district drew some 50,000 workers on weekdays and 250,000 visitors a week. Vassalo Rosa noted that such districts usually need 10 years to build and another 20 to come alive. António Mega Ferreira, one of the Expo’s leading figures, said it set a new standard of urban quality for Portugal.

The model’s influence abroad was uneven. Parque Expo sold planning advice to cities such as Chicomba in Angola, Recife in Brazil, Praia in Cape Verde and Cairo, and to later Expos, but Aelbrecht writes that at Expo 2000 Hannover it shaped only the financial model and built the Portugal Pavilion, and that Expo 2005 Aichi did not adopt the model either. Between 1998 and 2005 the BIE organized 10 symposia on themes such as Expos as catalysts of development and the legacy of international exhibitions, and in 2008 Parque Expo and the Portuguese Order of Architects marked the 10th anniversary with a conference. Prizes for the Expo’s works included a 2003 award from the Portuguese Order of Engineers for the urban park and the Gare do Oriente station.

Total costs through the end of 1998 reached about 421 million contos, roughly €2.1 billion, according to a 2000 report of Portugal’s Court of Auditors. A survey by Portugal’s Ministry for Equipment and Planning, cited by the BIE, suggested that 1.2 percent of the country’s GDP and 0.6 percent of its employment in 1998 may have been attributable to the Expo. Planners had named reuniting the city center with its waterfront as the main goal of the regeneration, and the BIE notes that it became a model for urban programs elsewhere in Portugal. Expo 1998 Lisbon turned an abandoned industrial waterfront into a new city center and kept the oceans at the heart of its legacy.