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The Netherlands Pavilion

The Dutch know what it's like to live in a delta. From young to old, all know how it feels to be surrounded permanently by water. It's part of daily life, and it is unique in the world. The country set out to share this special delta feeling through its pavilion at Expo 2012 in Yeosu, South Korea.

But how can the Dutch delta best be portrayed or experienced? It's hard to make it understandable or visible. But looking from above, from the air, using plane or satellite images, it is easy to see how vast areas of the country are water-veined.

So the concept of an aerial map emerged, where you could see how the country developed spectacularly out of the water. The map shows how new land was reclaimed from the sea through polders and dikes. Furthermore, it offers a glimpse at how the country looks today and how it may develop in the future.

Visitors to the pavilion, then, have an opportunity to view and immerse themselves in a map of epic proportions. The so-called “Audiovisual Map” is like a supersized map that has been opened with a giant hand. Executed on a grandiose scale, the map transforms into architecture and takes a central position in the pavilion’s interior. Visitors are completely surrounded by the map when they walk on it. But rather than a static image, the map is a constantly evolving projection surface. First there's a static image of the delta, but quickly morphs into moving images that represent the Netherlands.

The audio-visual map connects themes (such as past and future, people and technology, the Netherlands and the world, problems and solutions) in a complete visionary experience. In a few short minutes, all of those themes are touched upon briefly and connected with each other.

Located right before and right after the audio-visual map are two other areas: a museum-like pre-show area and a bright-orange post-show area bathed in the same color as the pavilion’s exterior.

The pre-show area is meant to introduce the theme of the pavilion, but moreover, it is meant to create a cultural bridge; to introduce the Netherlands and connect to the Korean visitors.To build that bridge, the pavilion calls on a 17th century Dutch explorer from the famous VOC trading company. He was shipwrecked and stranded in Korea, as one of the first foreigners there. Thirteen years later, he would escape with a journal he kept, which, in centuries to come, would be the handbook which opened up Korea to the Western World. In Korea, children still learn of this explorer, named Hendrik Hamel, in elementary school.

In the pre-show area, then, Hamel acts as the host, taking visitors back to his time, the so-called "Golden Age.” The space is dominated by numerous classical picture frames, literally filling the walls completely. In the pictures we see images, creating a kind of timeline. In addition, the exhibit houses a true-to-life replica of the original journal Hendrik Hamel wrote (the original is kept in the vault of the Netherlands Institute of Records). Also, the NIR helped in recovering an original World Map from around 1655, the time of Hendrik Hamel. This map was then processed into an actual, large-scale Globe, on which the traveling route of Hendrik Hamel can be found.

Together, the pavilion experience starts from the life of Hendrik Hamel — the age when the Netherlands first put itself (and the rest of the world, actually) on the map — and then moves on to mod

ern-day Netherlands and it’s delta area as it appears today. In the post-show area after the main film, visitors are introduced to Dutch technology and innovations on large-scale international water projects. Current and future Dutch projects from all over the world are shown.

Finally, following their time in the post-show area, visitors pass by the Dutch Design Store. The shop itself is strikingly designed with Dutch products set into internally lit cubbies, but it’s also a functional store selling everything from Dutch delicacies to Delft Blue pottery, the famous Hurricane Umbrella, Dutch bicycles, and various Droog Design products.