BERLIN FINN.

The Finnish Embassy in Berlin is one of the best new buildings in the city. Courageously, the Finnish government commissioned a team of young architects.

The Finish Embassy in Berlin is in the new Scandinavian compound on the corner of StulerstraBe and KlingelhoferstraBe where it shares space with the legations of the other four Nordic countries (AR March 2000). The oxidized copper wall of the whole may be controversial - is it a barricade or a statement of dignified reticence? But the quality of the buildings within the undulating green perimeter is undoubted.

None of the jurors could pretend to be ignorant of the prismatic Finnish building, but we were all very impressed by its reticence and dignity. A glass-clad volume is layered within an outer screen of aspen slats: a facade strategy which both acts as climate modifier, and allows the building to speak of its inner life at night, when its activities can be inferred from its idiosyncratic light patterns.

During the day, too, the building changes, for parts of the outer layer can be opened by the occupants using hydraulic mechanisms, and it alters appearance as the sun moves round, and people change their activities.

Inside, the noble progression of spaces from the entrance to the atrium to the light of the terrace is particularly impressive. The terrace is a wooden deck in the middle of which is a real rowan (the sacred mountain ash of the north). From under its (as yet small) branches are views out through the copper wall into the trees of KlingelhBferstraBe and the city. Inside, again, spatial complexity is multiplied by hanging the curved form of the conference room over the galleried atrium, and introducing light round it.

Detailing is always precise and materials appropriate. The stair which winds itself upwards in the central space is made of thick aluminium plate. Ceilings are generally of perforated galvanized steel plate. Exposed concrete structure is left untreated. The conference room is formed in wood, and clad in pale birch. Black linoleum covers the floors. All is calm, essential, Finnish. What could otherwise have perhaps seemed cold and hard is relieved by the brilliance of the ground floor mural by Silja Rantanen, which overwhelms you with colour when you enter the spatial sequence.

Much has been achieved with great economy of means. Light, always important in modern Finnish architecture, is controlled with great subtlety, as it filters through the slats of the office areas and through their translucent walls down to the hall. As the architects say, the embassy is a combination of 'simplicity, clarity and modesty, which gives it a truly Finnish identity, while providing a timeless and dignified setting'.

The jury was impressed not only by the building, but by the fact that the government had the bravery to give such a prestigious and nationally important job to a young team of architects after an open competition.

Architect

Toni Peltola, Rauno Lehtinen, Pekka Maki:

VIIVA Arkkitehtuuri Oy. Helsinki

Associate architect

Pysall-Ruge architects: Justus Pysall, Peter Ruge

Photography

Jussi Tiainen