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Expo Architecture 2008: Zaragoza, an urban project
by Freddy Massad, Alicia Guerrero-Yeste & Jaime Salazar
Actar, 2008
Paperback, 240 pages w/DVD
Not surprisingly, given its site
at the confluence of the Ebro, Gallego and Huerva Rivers,
the theme of Expo
2008 in Zaragoza, Spain was water. Combined with long-term
thinking about the physical and cultural impact of the Expo
on the area, the city is attempting to make the rivers into
strong cultural attractions, even though the Expo site only
engages a small portion of the Ebro west of the city center.
The main access to the site within the Ranillas Meander
is via a bridge designed by Zaha
Hadid. Formally it recalls the waves of moving water,
but ironically the enclosed structure -- actually called
the Bridge
Pavilion -- removes the water from the experience of
traversing the Ebro. What this seems to foreshadow about
the Expo is that formal innovation takes precedence over
theme, at least in the architecture.
This book documents the architecture
of Expo 2008 (a separate
book looks at its urbanism.) It collects the temporary
pavilions, the permanent buildings and the landscapes alongside
essays by Jaime Salazar. Lots of color photographs and architectural
drawings make for a well-designed document of the Expo.
It is highly likely that in the future, when some of the
city's ambitious long-term plans come to fruition, the Expo
will be remembered as a catalyst for development, much like
the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Buildings by the likes of Herzog &
de Meuron (this week's dose)
are already in the works, alongside major transportation
and landscape initiatives. The iconic
architecture of the Expo goes well beyond the Hadid
bridge: Francisco
Mangando's Spanish Pavilion and Nieto
Sobejano Architects' Auditorium and Convention Center
are two notable buildings that will be welcome additions
to the city's built fabric as it marches westward.
Like Beijing's boom surrounding the
Olympics in the same year -- and the
book that documents those buildings -- the successes
are accompanied by failures, or at least uninspiring or
misguided attempts. Overlooking the temporary pavilions,
the Aragon Pavilion by Olano
y Mendo Arquitectos (an unfortunate melding of Toyo
Ito's Mediatheque and a picnic basket) and the Water Tower
by Enrique
de Teresa (a decent design, but a hollow shell doing
no more than standing tall) are respectively ugly and bloated.
Ironically these, and the overly busy Fluvial Aquarium by
Alvaro
Planchuelo, relate to the theme more than the buildings
mentioned above in a more positive light. The Aragon Pavilion,
Water Tower and Aquarium illustrate the negative aspects
of any Expo, namely that iconic architecture must
be strived for, in this case when it is handled inadequately.
But ultimately it won't be the high or low points of the
Expo that will create its lasting presence. It will be the
transformation of the large-scale, undulating Participant's
Pavilions into Expo Zaragoza Empresarial
that will help cohere the competing icons into a functioning
part of Zaragoza in the future.
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