Hardcore Architecture: 10/18/09

The Dutch Embassy is greatly articulated within a limited, strictly cubic space. It continually twists and turns upon itself. “It constructs explorations of pleasure and a controlled chaos.” Within a zig-zag trajectory that folds back on itself several times within a perfectly modest-looking glass block; an intriguing contrast between the internal vitality and the tranquil expression of the façade is created. “almost like a diplomat”

The embassy is somehow a distant response to a political situation and a historical context, but also to two national images, in which one of it is tormented. On one hand: openness of modernity, transparency which is suppose to characterize the Netherlands, on the other a reunified Germany dealing with a haunting trauma palpable everywhere in the city.

The embassy is an unprecedented combination of block and independent building :

-It doesn’t sit directly on the ground instead it’s partially on a pedestal, a kind of piano nobile or terrace

- It doesn’t share a wall with the neighboring facades, but remains isolate.

- It is not made of stone but glass.

-It is entirely covered by a sheated grillwork of perforated aluminum plates which renders it slightly abstract.

-Its transparency plays with the light, depending on the time of the day, it allows one glimpse the shadow of many of the interior spaces’ structure.

In plan the glass cube is slightly skewed, as though the Berlin grid was relaxing.

An orderly visit to the embassy would start with: the most public place the consulate installed in the ground floor like a showcase. The cabinets are made of a translucent lime green resin..

At either sides two narrow staircases lead to the first floor which is the real reception. Above a deformed square whole, that one can hardly see, opens up an essential tool of the device, guiding ones eye through the trajectory hollowed into the cube and television tower, the symbol of communist Berlin.