NETHERLANDS EXPO PAVILLION / GERMANY
during the expo2000 in hannover the rotterdam based design team MVRDV has build
the netherlands pavillion on the fairgrounds. we paid it a visit six years after it was last used...officially.
nightshots (outside):
some nightshots ,showing the proportions of that building (compared to the car in the right bottom corner on the first picture) .the building is 40 meters high and was the highest of all expo2000-pavillions.
00(service facilities):
we entered the cellar trough one of the many smashed windows from the empty field next to the building ,wich has been some kind of sculpture park during the exibition.....we came into some kind of service facilities of the building. it seemed like there have been the rooms for the personel and several storage rooms, the whole thing looked a little bit like a deserted spacestation to me due to the aluminium ducts and the shiny metal walls. actually it was absolutly dammaged, nearly every electric device was stolen and a lot of other materials (wich has been and still are very expensive), but there would have been still a lot of things i could have used. like the whole building there was no place untouched. a lot of destruction and human waste. the one spot was even spilled with blood and shit. it is not clear to me why there was this thick security glass window in one of the room, it actually looked like a cell to me. in one part has been a lot of garbage, but i wasn't sure if somebody dropped his/her own trash there or if it was leftovers from the time the building was still in use. this was right next to the flooded elevator shaft, because of groundwater the whole cellar was very damp and a great number of walls were covered in mold.
01(dunes):
the first floor was desinged like a cave. during the time of the exibition visitors took the elevator up the top level and started their trip though the horizontal landscape of the netherlands, of course the elevators where out of order now, and pretty smashed up, with some beautiful results. an interessting room was the small chamber with the rolling door, i wonder what used to be in there ,we only found used condoms ,a dead pigeon and sleeping butterflies. the groundfloor was originally made of red brick stones but the most where stolen by now. trough a cave like exit we came to the ramplike way to the next floor.
02(flowers):
the second floor was quite flat and with a lot of pillars, maybe because it should simulate the vast flowerfields of the represented country .there used to be flowerbeds in the whole floor (tulips) and the yellow painted ceiling must have been quite a hard contrast aginst the green leaves of the plants.
we only found the broken hydrationpipe system and some baricade-like flowerpots with dead ivy ,wich were placed like walls or rails so that nobody would fell of the building (wich has nearly no walls at all).
03 (roots):
this floor was my favourite, i looked like somekind of reactor...but it used to be the floor with a lot of projections of roots. there where these grey cabins where the projectors used to be in. now in one of the cabins was a little "lovenest" with a white sytheticfur carpet on the floor, flowers and candels, not to forget the spraypainted swastika on the wall. the outside-"walls" where made of three layers of black plastic material, to prevent people from falling down and to block out the daylight, but most of it was cutted off by now, so that the wind could blow through the floor and clean the shiny concrete floor from dust ,only the broken alkopop bottels, wich used to be "in" sometime ago where left and a scary embowled blue thing soaked in it's own liquids.
04(forest):
this floor seems to be the sickest of all to me. the groundfloor was coveres with sand and earth and there were all kinds of trees an bushes, all dead by now. the celing is made of a silver reflecting material so that it is quite bright in there and during the night it seems like there are still some lights on up there ,if you pass by the building ,due to the reflecting lights of the still used buildings and the streetlamps around. this in combination to the ballardian soundsculptures on the fairground has made us think there is a party going on in the forest when we first went to the bulding.because some of the soil up there is eroded by now you could seen all the treeanchors made of steel and concrete. also very disturbing has been the red fireextinguisher-box on one of the trees. over the huge stairways we climbed further to the next level.
05(theatre):
the fifth floor was basicly mint(walls) and bordeaux(ceiling) coloured. on the whole space of the floor was a movie theatre. a really huge darkroom. with the only light coming through the destroyed door.
06(swamplands):
the roof used to be a simulation of a swamplike landscape with huge windenergy-generators. it was still very wet up there .over a pierlike brige you could go to a small bunker with a very strange inside design. the walls(ceiling were painted darkblue with thousands of white spots, but when we had a look up on the vandalized toilet booths we discovered these shiny silver plastic pieces sticking to the ceiling. they looked like somekind of spaceage shrapnell splinters and used to reflect the artificial starlight in this room. several fire places could be found inside this cave.
07(elevators):
over a small stair we went up to the elevator engine rooms, with all the machines and operating electronics. when we lifted a metal lit on the floor of that room we had a spooky view inside one of the very hard to reach parts of that building wich was allready occupied by pigeons. another scary thing we discoverd, up in this windowless room, were millions of tiny bugs crawling around in every corner. we imediatly left the room to the stairs again wich lead us tho the peak of the building.
08(airconditionig systems):
this floor was basically one room with several airconditioning system machines inside and one roofless part with the fans, from there it was possible, even during the rain wich has started to fall by now, to climb up on the top roof. this was very slippy and full of birdshit, but with a breathtaking view over the vast sickness of human culture (landscaping is one of the most perverse crimes!) we need definetly more strategies against architecture (and design).
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