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

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In designing the building Foster found that he had 669 individual clients--the number of Bundestag members. "Everything was debated in infinite detail." Foster says. "Meetings would go on for hours. Night would fall. Dinner would be served. They would end in the wee hours." Each step and controversy was covered exhaustively by the press and endlessly discussed by the public. "If the Reichstag is the city in microcosm," Foster adds, "It is also democracy in microcosm."

Out of this came not the usual architectural camel, but what is probably the most psychologically complex building ever to be made for a seat of government. Inevitably such an architectural statement has remained controversial. Some youthful critics see the memories recorded by the building as a kind of wallowing in another generation's guilt. Others see it as easy expiation. Having in such an official way acknowledged the tragic past, these critics argue, individuals need not reflect themselves on what it is about the German character that involved the nation in two disastrous adventures in world domination and racial purification.

That such a charged design came from Norman Foster is almost as surprising, since emotionally evocative architecture is not what one associates with his work. Acknowledging not only the intense commitment by his own staff, but the addition of numerous works of art by internationally regarded artists and even the shrouding of the Reichstag prior to reconstruction by the artists Christo and Jean Claude, Foster says, "The building has been metaphysically lightened. By that I don't just mean the addition of glass here or there. The reality is that Germany has become an incredibly wonderful sort of open society. I can't think of any country in the world that could have handled a project of such national significance with such conviction and courage."

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