Expo Lisboa

Competition for Venazuelan Pavillion at Expo '98 Lisbon

This proposal pretends to rescue the values of seas, rivers and oceans as a potential space for the future. Our main concern is to enhance its virtues more than its characteristics. Inside the preexisting pavilion we tried to show the particularities and kindness of Venezuelan’s sites through an abstract space. Conceptually the project talks more about the encounter of cultures through the connections of seas and rivers than of the discovery of an unknown land.

The general layout of this project establishes three ways of interactions: an immediate image of the outside of a giant porch, a second approach is to simulate a short run, and last but not least along visit through every image and every audio visual presentation.

First there is a “penetrable” best known by the Venezuelan artist that developed that technique, Jesus Soto. This basically separates one experience from the others, simulating a great waterfall that does not pretend to be a literal representation but an abstract image of what it could refer to. A big flag that works as a door and is conceived as a venetian blind, where the oscillations of every wing suggests the oscillation of a big flag in a very abstract way. An inverted structure similar to an oil exploitation tower in memory of our natural resource and the proper industrialization of it.

Once inside, an aluminum structure built as a scaffold show a linear but concentric sweep where different devices of information are placed. It covers the next space in the sequence discovered at the end of this ellipse. The centerspace with a crystal floor simulates the ocean’s depth and over it a giant map that shows the situation between Venezuela and Portugal. Finally an unexpected view of the bottom of the auditorium that seems to float like the casket of a typical fishboat.

This last space with a crystalloid character, surrounded by screens that support the scaffolds mentioned before. The simultaneously of events occurring on this place talks about the quality of the bottom of the ocean.