Restaurants, shops and services - Expo Lisbon 1998
According to the architects, the temporary buildings, which provide various services to visitors and also serve as restaurants and shops, must display a certain unity in order to create a brand image for Expo'98.
To do this, they decided that these buildings should be constructed with a "macro-structure" made up of L-shaped metal profiles.
These form a rectangular grid with a basic module of seven square metres.
The architects therefore created a building system based on this "macro-structure" and a series of combinable elements that can produce claddings, pavements, vertical claddings (opaque or transparent), stairs and steps, signposts, and so on. A collection of building parts with precise assembly rules capable of producing all the different types of visitor support buildings, and which, once EXPO '98 is over, can be easily dismantled and, who knows, put in place elsewhere.
This "Mecano" allows the combination of small units, which are assembled very easily and quickly, and can be reused after the expo with a minimum of earthworks.