Colonial outpost.

The new Dutch embassy in Paramaribo embodies a modern tropical architecture that responds to context and climate, yet has an appropriately dignified civic presence.

Suriname is the new name for what was originally called Dutch Guiana, geographically sandwiched between the old British and French Guianas on the north-east coast of South America. It was the first foothold on this continent for all three countries and was where they started building their empires in the New World. The Dutch first took over this land in the seventeenth century, exploiting its resources (including gold, rice, bauxite, hardwood, tropical fruit and fishing) for over 300 years until they finally left in 1975, when it became an independent nation, with a population of 450 000.

An amazing culture emerged, combining and mixing many races including fragments of the old South American population, African Negroes, Indians, people from the East Indies brought by the Dutch, the Chinese (the great quiet colonials) and not least Europeans, not only from Holland, but also from Spain, Portugal and England. Together these people formed a country that has a particular and strong identity. This region is now brilliantly poised to form a bridge between North America via the Caribbean and South America.

Before going to Suriname, I was given the impression that there was very little to see. In fact, Paramaribo is a thriving and important city, containing a quarter of a million people. It is an established seat of Government, as well as a trading base, with markets, educational facilities and cultural activities, laid out in a series of overlapping grids. Lying just 6 degrees north of the equator, it is hot and humid nearly all year round. Located on Suriname's broad sea coast, at the mouth of the great Suriname River, Paramaribo is surrounded by tropical rain forest. The river, which threads its way north through this hot wet jungle from the Brazilian border in the south, is historically the only major trade route to and from the interior and still plays an important part in the life of the country today.

It was in this context that Lucien Lafour and Rickert Wijk started their practice together. Both trained in Holland, and each worked there separately for several years before going to Suriname in 1976, where they met for the first time. Their collaboration over the next 21 years produced some memorable buildings. In Suriname they have built schools, housing, workplaces, private houses and hospitals (the hospital at Marienburg being the most celebrated to date, AR October 1984). Over the past 15 years they have been based in Holland, engaging in a range of projects along with the design and supervision of urban plans for several Dutch cities.

The high standard of their work, coupled with a long association and commitment to Suriname, made Lafour and Wijk the natural choice of the Dutch Government for their new embassy in Paramaribo. This building is the first of its kind by the practice, and although it is a comparatively large building for Paramaribo, it works well in the neighbourhood, which consists predominantly of two- and three-storey buildings with a few of four storeys scattered within it. The site is fronted by a small canal, so the building is approached across a new and shaded bridge serving both pedestrian and vehicular access to the grounds of the embassy. Mass, form and a compact morphology are the driving forces behind the concept. These considerations allow the building to sit comfortably within its site, establishing generous and platonic spaces on either side, in relation to the surrounding buildings.

The compactness of the main building is essential here, as an even mildly fragmented proposal would have diffused the old urban context which clearly needed some strengthening in recent times. Needless to say, compact buildings are more efficient and conserve energy while at the same time affording good internal communication between the various functions housed.

The gentle presence of the building within the street scene, a mute requirement for a building of this kind, is achieved by a composition of two interlocked oval plan forms creating informal geometries both inside and outside. The cascading curved roofs and sun screens form the predominant elements of the facades, covering the whole building and providing the embassy with a distinct identity.

At the front of the site the building is organised on three floors housing the immigration and cultural departments. Nestled into these three floors is an open court shaded at roof level. Around the court are a series of rooms overlooking a terrace at ground floor level. This terrace acts as a threshold and forms the route into the main body of the embassy in the four-storey rear part of the building. On the terrace is a great cascading waterfall with fountains to cool those entering the heart of the building, At this point is a great four-storey hall surrounded by access balconies on each level which are connected vertically by a big stair and lift.

Planning the building around these two multi-storey spaces (one inside and the other on the outside) provides important contact between levels. This brings occupants back to the centre of their working world whenever they need to communicate either with others in the building or with the city outside. The circulation spaces are articulated to provide degrees of privacy and variation in scale. The ambassador is located in a suite of rooms at the hinge point where the two parts of the building mass engage one another. He is thus placed at the top of the taller part of the building overlooking the lower oval and the street beyond.

Lafour & Wijk's experience of Suriname's tropical context is clearly evident by the use of the overhanging sun-shading elements lining the elevations throughout, a device which sets the whole aesthetic simply and with great strength. This preoccupation with integrated climate controlling elements can be seen in the design of the Marienburg hospital and other earlier Lafour and Wijk Surinamese projects, all of which develop the requirements for sun shading and water shedding as major architectural elements.

The new building exemplifies a tropical architecture that clearly responds to its context. I enjoyed it for the careful planning of its individual parts within an overall form. Moreover, given the tight discipline of the programme and the compact massing of the building form, Lafour & Wijk have succeeded in creating a great variety of room shapes and sizes. The layering of spaces and circulation through the section is arranged well, allowing good cross lighting and ventilation when needed. And the use of materials and colour are restrained to the exact point where they simply support the aesthetic without overstating any individual part of the composition.

The design succeeds on two important counts; it deals with its urban context most satisfactorily and has synthesised the requirements of brief and climate, without over asserting its function or relationship with other buildings in the neighbourhood. It is a success, I am sure, and is popular with all those who know and use it.