With His Sleek Ecological Design, Lord Norman Foster Imbues the Reichstag with Germany's New Self Image
Architectural Record, July 1999
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But Foster's duty was the most charged, because the Reichstag will remain the most prominent government building, and because he had to deal with the structure's tragic history. The Reichstag's original architect, Paul Wallot, weighed down the mighty bulk of the original building with torchlike finials and bellicose statuary. Democratic government's failure to form deep roots before the end of World War II meant the structure only rarely played much of a role in the nation's life, according to Michael Z. Wise, in Capital Dilemma: Germany's Search for a New Architecture of Democracy (1998, Princeton Architectural Press). Even that role came to an end in 1933, when fire swept the building, an event Hitler, calling the fire a terrorist act of arson, used as a pretext to consolidate his power. Further damaged by bombardment during the war, it remained as a semi-ruin through much of the postwar era, even with a modest restoration in the 1960s by architect Paul Baumgarten. Because the Berlin Wall passed immediately to its east, the German Democratic Republic regarded any important use by the West as a provocation.
Though dogged by much controversy throughout its seven-year gestation, the new Reichstag opened with its high ambitions intact. Removing some one-third of the original construction and almost all of the 1960s additions, Foster's office organized the Bundestag's new functions straightforwardly within the structure's old stone walls and existing volumes. The architect located the chamber for the Bundestag with related support functions on the raised main level; press, guest galleries, and invited-guest reception rooms in a mezzanine; rooms for the President and council of elders on the second floor; caucus and meeting rooms for political parties surrounding a press lobby on the third floor.
But work on the building collided with uncomfortable aspects of history every step of the way. Foster had conceived much of his new work as a light, clean, modern insertion, clearly separated from the lugubrious but impressive heft of Wallot's envelope. But as demolition proceeded, the design team found that much of the obscured historic fabric had been irreparably ruined by fire and bomb damage. Contractors had chipped off many of the remaining cornices and moldings when affixing the new surfaces of Baumgarten's renovation. Also uncovered was graffiti left behind by Russian soldiers who had stormed the building at the end of World War II. After much debate, reconstruction of these areas was ruled out in favor of recognizing the depredations of history. Damaged areas have only been stabilized and cleaned up. Plain plaster covers missing surfaces. Some of the graffiti was retained even though its subject matter would otherwise be thought unsuited to august corridors of power.
The design's tour de force is the dome. Its skin looks delightfully delicate from a distance. A futuristic, double spiral of ramps spins lightheartedly within. It has already become the city's new icon, visible everywhere among the skyline of new glass-and-metal office towers and the dour domes and spires of the imperial past.
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