With His Sleek Ecological Design, Lord Norman Foster Imbues the Reichstag with Germany's New Self Image

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Deep within the squat, fire- and bomb-battered shell of Berlin's 1894 Reichstag lies the crystalline envelope Sir Norman Foster has constructed. Within this new seat for the Bundestag, the German parliament, one cannot help but be impressed by the sheer glass walls, dramatically suspended walkways, crisp geometries shaped in aluminum and stone-and people squashing their faces against the four-story-high glass of the western side. Those twisted visages peering through the reflections disturb the hushed decorum; they belong to a public that wonders what it will witness now that Foster has put united Germany's chief deliberative body under literal scrutiny by its electorate.

It is heartening that people actually will act on such an opportunity since it is easy to conclude in our cynical age that politicians do nothing of consequence in public view. But the swarms of visitors that already line up to see the Reichstag, reopened only last April, also want to judge for themselves whether the new seat of united Germany realizes its extraordinary ambitions. Can it really represent a new generation's vision of its country as profoundly democratic, peace-loving, and dedicated to ecological sustainability? Can a building help a people remember the sins of the past and dedicate themselves to a less-pathological future?

The Reichstag is not alone in its mission to change the image of Germany in its own and in the worlds' eyes. All around it an entirely new quarter of offices is rising for the Bundestag as well as for the many ministries that are relocating from Bonn. Geographical, political, and economic reality may have made the city an inevitable choice for the reunited country. But as the erstwhile nerve center of two world wars, a city designed for the easy movement of troops and festooned with bombastic architectural paeans to a militaristic past, the government's return to Berlin inevitably causes discomfort-both in and out of Germany. Berlin is not, and perhaps never will be an ordinary capital.

Each of the architects participating in this vast undertaking is walking the same tightrope, trying to develop a design that is appropriately open and dignified without resorting to devices that inspire comparison to Fascist or imperial monumentality.

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