Photo essay: Shopping Centers

We're going to talk about the main shopping centers in Lisbon. We chose this theme for our project because today's society is mostly based on excessive consuming and people like to spend their weekend afternoons in these places.





This is the oldest shopping center in Lisbon. It's called Amoreiras, because it's located in the zone of Lisbon with the same name. It was built in the early 1990's, when it was an office building. Then, the lower part became a shopping center while the top part is still working as offices today.
Amoreiras was the place where the first McDonald's restaurant opened in Portugal.
When Michael Jackson came to Portugal, rumor has it. that he ordered the manager of Amoreiras to close it down to the public, so he could do his shopping all by himself. Obviously, the manager didn't agree with his demand.





Colombo is the biggest shopping center in the whole Iberian Peninsula. It was named after the famous Italian navigator Christopher Columbus.
It has three floors, more than four hundred stores and a small amusement area called Funcenter with all types of rides and an arcade.
Colombo is the most attractive and visited shopping center in the entire country.







This one is called Vasco da Gama, after the most famous Portuguese navigator. It was built after the Expo 98, to make Parque das Nações more frequented again.
In our opinion this building is the most modern and beautiful in term of architecture, but compared to the other centers, Vasco da Gama is the weakest, not only for the number of stores but also for its location.





El Corte Inglés is not really a shopping center, it's a giant department store, but people use it for the same purpose.
The bottom floor is full of restaurants and movie theaters, while the other nine floors up are nothing but a single huge store. Each floor has its own category: DVDs, software, music and electronics on the first floor,women's clothing on the second, toys on the third, etc.
We think that El Corte Inglés is the most confusing and tiring (because of all the floors) of all the shopping centers.


The location, the architecture, the number of stores are all organized, so that shopping centers become appealing to people.