With the Expo Campus project starting construction earlier this year, a piece of Dutch heritage will finally be reborn. But not long before that, the MVRDV-designed Netherlands Pavilion for the 2000 World Expo in Hanover appeared very different, a ruin after twenty years of neglect. It was in this state that photographer Piet Niemann encountered the structure, capturing it as part of a long-term project examining the legacy of the World Expo sites. That photographic work was recently awarded in the European Architectural Photography Prize and subsequently exhibited by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum. It is also the subject of a forthcoming book, "Expo 2000 – 20 Years Later", for which MVRDV founding partner Jacob van Rijs wrote the following essay titled "The Beauty of a Ruin".

Ruins can be sad and beautiful at the same time. When the Expo 2000 in Hannover was long over, when the flow of visitors had dried up, and the positive newspaper articles had become scrap paper, the site was fenced off. They were not very sturdy fences, I can say from experience. A couple of times when I was in the area in Germany I slipped in, for old times’ sake. In the dark, such a dilapidated structure is extra mysterious. Once I made a special discovery: a plastic mould used in the VIP room’s glittering ceiling, designed by Marcel Wanders. That souvenir is now in a closet in my office.

At MVRDV we don't like looking back. We prefer to look ahead, to the future, investigating how it can be more social and sustainable. Expo 2000 was, of course, a project that shaped our work and thinking enormously. In fact, the theme is still relevant to many of the problems we face now in the Netherlands, showing a different, more efficient, way to use space. The title that the Dutch government came up with was rather prosaic, “Holland Creates Space”. It would not become a pavilion for eternity. On the contrary, the top half of the structure would only be there for 100 days.

© Piet Niemann

The assignment was to create a pavilion that would attract attention, something spectacular that would confirm our Dutch open-mindedness, while also including a number of stereotypes such as flowers, windmills, and dunes. But above all it had to be a grand gesture, one with which the Netherlands would outdo its big brother. It had to be something that served as an eye-opener for its visitors, an experience. We wanted to create a world full of wonders in which you fall from one surprise to the next, which had expressiveness, and which went beyond a nostalgic image.

It may sound strange, but the first thing we worked on was ‘making space’. Instead of occupying the entire plot with the pavilion, we wanted to optimise the use of space by stacking landscapes.

In other words, by making a vertical pavilion, you could create a lot of space around the stack. Our first sketch already showed a tower consisting of six stacked landscapes, where you could wander through a different world on each floor. From dune landscapes to farmland, from caves to a forest, everything had to be in it, and then the symbol of the future, windmills, on top. Around it was ‘new nature’, wild plants and flowers with dark gravel paths. Visitors went up with the elevator and could then descend on foot via the stairs. They were shown a different landscape at every level and an exhibition where solutions for spatial planning were shown.

The pavilion would ultimately host 9,000 m2 of floor space and, at 40 metres, was the tallest structure at the fair. The top floors of the structure were supported by 15 robust tree trunks, 14 sturdy oaks and a beech, which carried the upper floors. One entire floor consisted solely of dunes. We came up with rain curtains and much more. The opening had been planned exactly three years before – a date from which we could not deviate even a day. That meant that there was no extra time for us, and everything had to be realised within 1.5 years. The construction was a race against time, and we had not made it easy for ourselves.

© Piet Niemann

The fact that, when it opened, the pavilion looked exactly as it had in the initial renders is mainly due to an important partner in this project: structural engineer Rob Nijsse of ABT. He translated our design into a structure that was not only beautiful but also solid; even if one of the trees failed, the pavilion would still stand firm. It was an experimental building – it was the first time this combination of structural systems had been used. In the end, the pavilion became not only a stack of worlds, but also of construction methods. Over the years, both together and independently, Rob and I lectured about this building to explain how we had collaborated as architect and engineer. This building contains a little of everything – the materials and construction methods are like a sample of what was possible at the time.

When Queen Beatrix, along with ministers and other dignitaries, visited the pavilion a few days after its official opening, it was in perfect condition. More than 2.8 million people followed – 28,000 per day for 100 days. Our headstrong Dutch approach had an impact; every day, visitors wanted to see it with their own eyes. We won a number of prizes, and our contribution showed how we could optimise space by expanding vertically in the densely populated Netherlands. Our pavilion – or park – of stacked nature was a way of showing that technology and nature need not be mutually exclusive, but that we can use technology to create nature. The people who went through this adventure with us have not forgotten it; some who went there as children with their parents, others who devoted philosophical papers to it, and still many others for whom it simply made a significant impression.

For many designs, there comes a time when you have to let go of your creation, when the users move in and make it their own. The end of the Expo 2000 pavilion was ingrained from the beginning. We knew it couldn't be there for eternity, if only because of the height of the building: we had only received a temporary exemption for the 40-metre height, and so the top was designed to be demountable, and only the bottom floors permanent. After making international headlines, it seemed to us that the pavilion was on track to be reused, at least in part. It could remain on the edge of the exhibition grounds in Hannover, with the added intention that the exhibition grounds would develop into a “tech-park” to make the city more attractive for conferences. Reality caught up with us. The collapse of the dot-com bubble caused interest to evaporate, and the pavilions became homes to auto garages. The momentum seemed to be over, although there was some good news: the temporary high-rise permit was extended every five years, with the tree trunk columns checked for safety each time.

© Piet Niemann

You could make a docusoap about the drama around the project’s redevelopment in the decades that followed. As is often the case with this type of project, there were lofty ideas for a sustainable new future, which foundered due to unfortunate circumstances. The possibility of moving the structure to various cities in the Netherlands and Germany has even been seriously considered. But that also turned out to be a bridge too far, practically speaking. In my work as an architect and as a professor at TU Berlin, I often focus upon transformations. I think our original premise, saving space by stacking, has saved the pavilion. Because there was room for homes and offices around the pavilion – and also because as the city expands the site has become less remote, as well as closer to the university – it suddenly became financially feasible to develop: the new buildings pay for the transformation of what can now be regarded as contemporary heritage.

We still work in a “Dutch” way, which sometimes clashes with the German approach of “es ist nicht erlaubt”. All in all, I think we have delivered an exciting project: we are turning a temporary project into a permanent building, while keeping the original spirit of the design. There will soon be a wreath of student apartments around the pavilion, so that the homes on the inside of the new addition will look out to the pavilion at the centre. The pavilion has now been stripped, almost to its base, but it will also be given new life, rebuilt into a fully-fledged building.

Of course, at times in the past decades, it was difficult to swallow. Too little happened for too long. There was something tragic about it, as if this building followed the mantra of “live fast, die young”. At the same time, there was something hopeful about the ruin as well; the basic elements were still there, noone ordered it to be bulldozed to the ground, and the city council was keen to keep it. If you now look at the result, I still feel the character, the atmosphere of the Expo is, as it were, embedded in the new project.

The twenty years of stagnation and descent into ruin hurt a little. Maybe that's why I find Piet Niemann's photos so special. They show an intermediate moment for the pavilion; you don't know whether it will stay or go. The life is gone, but the structure is the essence of the project, and is beautiful in itself. Niemann's images give us a beautiful snapshot of that moment. He has caught something that will never return. You can see the traces of what it once was. The past, that glorious experience of 2.8 million visitors, is known. Yet after more than 20 years of vacancy, the fog makes the images still and mysterious, beautifully symbolic because – even though we now know how it will unfold – in the images of this book, the future of this beautiful structure is still uncertain.

Piet Niemann's photographic book, "Expo 2000 – 20 Years Later" will be published by Kerber in August. You can order it here.