Total Landscape

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2000 by Catherine Slessor

One of the most conspiouous structure on the entire Exposite the Dutch pavilion is a huge layer cake that reflects the country's intimate relationship with its landscape

With delivious trony MVRDV's Dutch pavillion is sites directly opposite the lamentable UK contribution emphasizing revealion different of approach between the two countries. While the Dutch celebrate the arts of building landscape and ecology with an exuberant architecture layer take perhaps the most dramatic single structure on the entire sites the British take refuge in a cheap warehouse that would not look out of place on the most panal edge of town retail park. It is at actively telling it somewhat depressing cultural comparison.

Like Britain the Netherlands is densely populated country with a strong country with a strong northern European democratic tradition. Unlike the British the Dutch have had to determinedly and ingeniously claw back much of their land from the grip of the sea giving rise to a heightened and very particular relationship between people and topography MVRDV's extraordinary club sandwich of a building is both a meditation on this relationship and a speculation on how it might evolve in the future it also touches lightly on issues of topical global significance of how to reconcile increases in population density with the fragility of nature and quality of human life. The monumental multi level park is intended to symbolize the forces of nature modified by man Stacked dizzlly above the surrounding pavilions the layered structure is set among a carpet of flowers a bizarre yet engaging phototypical experiment that suggests new ways of colonizing land and space.

Essentially a series of stacked square floor plates that vary in section height the pavillion is a labyrinthine journey through different sorts of environments. Wrapped pracariously around the perimeter of the building like a unifying ribbon an external stair forms the main means of vertical circulation affording changing glews of the Expo site as you gradually asdend or descend. From a subterranean grotto to a windswept roof garden studded with whirling windmills the circuit around the pavilion is a logical progress through the earth and its elements.

Sitting on a brick-clad box of offices and administration spaces the lowest public level is sensuous and cave like enclosed by undulating plances of smooth raw concrete Massive and geological this forms the rusticated base supporting the lighter levels above it also houses the pavilion's information point and shops. The metaphorical cave leads up to a metaphorical field of flowers with thousands of potted plants and shrubs arrayed on steel tables as if in a giant greenhouse. A vivid yellow ceiling represents the nurturing power of the sun.

From here, you ascend to a functional level of hermetic cylindrical pods, containing lavatories and storage. The fat white cylinders form a surreal, artificial landscape, in contrast with the next level which is a forest composed of mature Danish oak trees. Heavy trunks of oak appropriated as angular columns and a wan green radiance bestowed by rows of strip lights contrive to reinforce the arboreal theme.

The penultimate floor is given over to a circular exhibition hall clad in a scaly copper skin. The dark metal is just visible through a translucent external wall made of gauzy stretched fabric. Rounding off the pavilion's layers is a roof garden with grassy hummocks and a calm, reflecting pool. Slender wind generators, like giant daisies, are used to make electricity for the building. Incongruous yet inventive, MVRDV's cartoon-like distillation of landscape has a spiritedness of vision and execution that cuts incisively through the Expo stodge. With its optimistic fusion of tectonics and greenery, the pavilion takes on the character of a happening or microcosmic ecosystem. suggesting intriguing paradigms for the future.