Plan Designing a New Stage for German Power by Michael z. Wise FOR NEARLY A HALF CENTURY, the Federal If Bonn's buildings were intended After 1949, sleepy Bonn was ness center sponsored by a con­ Republic ofGermany studiously avoided creating grand to exude a sense of atonement - accorded the legal status of sortium of U.S.-based investors. government buildings. The self-consciously modest, modern an architectural hair shirt for a Germany's temporary capital, Although West Berlin had lost West German capital that arose in Bonn after the demise contrite nation - the German nothing more than a way station much of its economic base dur­ ofNazi Berlin stood in pointed contrast to the overblown government is adopting a some­ pending the country's unification. ing the Cold War, the commercial classicism favored by the Third Reich - an architectural what different tone for the offi­ Once the Berlin Wall collapsed, projects manifest hope that busi­ cial structures it has commis­ representatives of the Federal ness activity would surge again in declaration of "Never Again." sioned for Berlin. The restored Republic were called upon to the revived city. capital's architecture and layout make good their historic pledge are consonant with unified to uproot themselves and move Amid the construction commo­ Federal ministries in the small Germany's status as the mightiest 380 miles eastwards back to tion at these and dozens of other Rhineland town set up opera­ nation in Europe and in keeping Germany's traditional seat of private-sector projects that tions in unassuming quarters. with the expansive urban scale of government. Despite decades of turned the city into Europe's The federal parliament, the the country's historic power cen­ lip service to doing just that, largest building site, the unified Bundestag, moved into an aus­ tre. many members of the Bundestag German state grappled with its tere new building and govern­ were reluctant to pack up and own architectural reconception. ment chiefs from Ludwig Erhard But in planning the government's leave the cozy town that had Not surprisingly, one of the to Gerhard Schroder occupied a move to Berlin from Bonn , suited their purposes so well. thorniest official design squat, low-slung official resi­ German leaders had an acute challenges was dence nicknamed "the sense of architecture's symbolic These reservations found expres­ Chancellor's Bungalow." potency and therefore feared an sion in the narrow margin of the international furor about their parliament's 1991 vote for relo­ aspirations if they revived an cating to Berlin . Already by 1991, overly monumental official style. the ideological triumph of capi­ A long string of state-sponsored talism over East bloc communism design competitions has resulted was taking its most prominent in a mixed bag of architectural built form in Berlin, with plans compromises. The designs, and for new corporate office the often bitter debate sur­ complexes for Daimler- rounding their creation, Benz and Sony on the serves as a valuable lens reborn Potsdamer Platz. through which to con­ The site of the former sider Germany's future East-West border cross- direction and its rela­ ing, Checkpoint tionship to the past. Charlie, was trans- formed into a busi- ,-: ,_ ,...._l i LI P-~~ ' ~ l::_-_-_-_-_-_-_-::.._-_-_-_-_-_-_- - -====-_::--i__, Project New Gennan Parliament, Reichstag. Long section (section of Si r Nonnan .-- Foster's design for Reichstag renovation). Credi/: Sir Norman Faster and Partners, /.JJndon. I Plan Schultes and Frank were obvious had to perform the equivalent of Schultes originally wanted the their history and should proudly choices to design the a high-wire balancing act. They Federal Strip to be of a uniform regard themselves as a "normal" Chancellery, since it forms a key needed distinctive imagery that height, but Kohl pushed the nation. His comments make one part of the master plan that the could serve as an instantly recog­ architects to double the size of wonder whether the symbol­ same architects also created for nizable backdrop when foreign his office so that it would not be laden new Chancellery might Berlin's latest government dis­ statesmen come calling and offi­ outflanked by the nearby have looked different had the trict. The Schultes-Frank­ cial pronouncements are made. Reich stag. younger Social Democrat been designed district, now under con­ The design also had to surpass premier when the building was struction in an area known as the the functional but nondescript The main facade of the planned. But by the time he took Spreebogen, comprises a massive Chancellery in Bonn . Completed Chancellery, scheduled for com­ office, the project was already ribbon of official structures remi­ in 1976, that building looks little pletion by autumn 2000, looks well into the construction phase. niscent of the Mall in different from a corporate office onto a large ceremonial court The carefully calibrated design Washington D.C. Called the for BMW or Siemens. where Germany's leaders will now being realized befits a the headquarters of the German Band des Bundes, or Federal greet state visitors. Embellishing national capital that Schroder Chancellor, the first to govern Strip, it is as wide as a football At the same time, Schroder's pre­ this entryway will be a collection touts as being "self-confident from Berlin since Adolf Hitler. field, with the Chancellery and its decessor, Helmut Kohl, who had of concrete columns up to forty­ without being arrogant." For it Drawn up by the Berlin architects gardens at the western end and himself hoped to occupy the new six feet high. But the prospect of will have neither an aura of Axel Schultes and Charlotte offices and a library for the Chancellery, was wary of any another imposing colonnaded undue pomp nor false modesty, Frank , the new Chancellery's Bundestag at the other. The architecture that verged on the Chancellery in Berlin set off alarm while still offering a far more dra­ design marks a clean break with plan 's east-west orientation has forbidding or aloof. Schultes, too, bells in Kohl's office, so to avoid matic setting than Bonn's muted Bonn's anonymous, low-key symbolic import because the new took pains to avoid resuscitating anything that might have stage for German history's next approach. "This is no longer government district is rising upon the pretentious corridors of Speerian echoes, the architects act. understatement," Schultes said the very same Berlin tract where power like those Charlie Chaplin devised irregularly shaped and after winning the commission in Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, lampooned in "The Great asymmetrically placed columns Another new Berlin state building 1995. Now that Germany had envisioned a vast north-south Dictator." The design thus went that look more like rippling pan­ raising symbolic issues is the become a nation of 82 million axis, framed at opposite ends by through a half-dozen reworkings els than traditional pillars. The office for the president's adminis­ people, he declared: "We are a gargantuan victory arch and an during which Schultes said he result adds depth and a play of trative staff located adjacent to moving forward and we have to even bigger domed hall large and Frank "felt our pulse and light and shadow to the facade, Schloss Bellevue. The work of respond. The Republic must enough to accommodate that of the country." while also providing fresh Martin Gruber and Helmut show its colors." 180,000 people. iconography for a liberal democ­ Kleine-Kraneburg of Frankfurt, it Schultes and Frank fashioned a ratic state. involves an elliptical structure of The Federal Strip thus seeks to nine-story cube to house the polished granite. Enthusiasts cancel out Speer's design while executive offices, cabinet meet­ Since easily have called it jewel-like, a cabo­ forging a new architectural alle­ ing rooms, an auditorium for defeating Kohl chon nestled in the leafy green of gory - a ribbon of federal news conferences and a circular in 1998, the Berlin park known as the offices that also acts to international conference room Gerhard Tiergarten . But others, including knit together the once suitable for summits of the Schroder has former President Roman Herzog, divided city while European Union and the G-7, the argued that were right to fear that the project running across an group comprising the world's the Germans would resemble a shadowy coli­ area previously leading industrial nations. are too "up seum, a fortress or a massive sar­ traversed by the Flanking the cube will be two tight" about cophagus. Berlin Wall. For lower administrative\ wings for Germany's the Chancellery's 500-member new staff. The five-story wings, their Chancellery, mass leavened by thirteen glass­ Schultes enclosed gardens, form the outer and Frank edges of the Federal Strip. ,. _ i - ; ·1 l I i I ~1§29 ~±~ Plan The structure is a "black house." for their own use. Russia's cur­ But no German building has Diplomats and political scientists It's an elegant form but certainly rent head of state, acting presi­ more symbolic potency than the will doubtless focus on a wealth the sort of architecture that dent Vladimir Putin, occupies the Reichstag, the former imperial of other factors in determining would never have been proposed tsarist-built Kremlin where Lenin, parliament. When the Reichstag whither unified Germany, but the for unassuming Bonn. Despite Stalin and other communists also dome was completed a century planning of the new Berlin modifications to the original reigned. Sir Edwin Lutyens's ago, Kaiser Wilhelm II con­ remains a compelling gauge of design, the building has a palace for the British viceroy in demned it as "the height of the uncertain state of the nation.