Transparent diplomacy - new German Embassy in Helsinki, Finland

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 1995 by Jill Arnott

Juha Leiviska's work has always been infused with light in the most subtle and ingenious ways. In his churches, for instance at Mannisto in Kuopio (AR June 1994 pp84-89) and at Myyrmaki (AR June 1987 pp6l-67), light flows across planes of whiteness and delicate colour that have been layered with de Stijl-like abstraction to create numinous spaces that perhaps have some associations with the Baroque but are impossible to imagine before this century. Some of the quality is derived from what Colin Rowe has called `phenomenal transparency' that he defines in Georgy Kepes' words:

'If one sees two or more figures overlapping one another, and each of them claims for itself the common overlapped part, then one is confronted with a contradiction of spatial dimensions. To resolve this contradiction one must assume the presence of a new optical quality. The figures are endowed with transparency: that is, they are able to interpenetrate without an optical destruction of each other. Transparency however implies more than an optical characteristic, it implies a broader spatial order. Transparency means a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations. Space not only recedes but fluctuates in a continuous activity.'(1)

To this property is added the qualities of the spaces as huge internal sundials as light from the sun moves and changes. In temporal building types, there is less scope for spatial magic, but Leiviska's German embassy in Helsinki is plainly of the same family as the churches. The site is on the southern shore of Kuusisaari, one of the islands in the wide fjord to the west of the old centre. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the island was linked to the mainland by road bridges, its gentle glaciated landscape of smooth scraped stone, grass and forest was developed with luxury villas surrounded by extensive grounds in which many of the trees were preserved.

One of the villas was demolished in the 1970s, and the German government bought the plot complete with its splendid mature garden. Leiviska won the two-stage invited competition (32 Germans and three Finns) with a scheme that clearly divides the programme into chancellery (offices) and residence (reception areas and the ambassador's house). Two L-shaped blocks of accommodation are set with their angles next to each other, making a fundamentally cruciform figure on the site. The entrance is where the angles meet, and the four quarters of the site have different functions. The north-west quadrant is the entrance court; the north-east is the garden of the chancellery. The reception rooms of the residence look out over terraces in the south-western quadrant. In the south-east angle is the terrace of the cour d'honneur, where the canopied space that links the entrances to the two halves of the complex is projected as platforms that run along the wings. At their junction, the court gently projects into the landscape that falls down to the shore of the fjord. Views out through the trees over the sea towards the natural park and open-air museum on the island of Seurasaari are framed and modified by four tall thin slabs clad with the warm smooth Jura marble that covers the in-situ concrete structure of the rest of the embassy. Here, for the first time in this building, we are given some notion of the phenomenal transparency that Leiviska has explored so successfully in his churches. At the same time, the slabs have a solemn and rather grave presence that adds to the dignified nature of this part of the building. (An embassy must after all be a most serious place from time to time - the terraces of the south-west garden are available for more informal open-air gatherings.)

Leiviska's course has not been easy. A metal fence had to be provided across the entrance court to provide more secure conditions for the chancellery, so the simplicity and elegance of the dual entrance in the middle of the site was compromised. The chancellery's window frames had to be increased in section to conform to the relevant DIN, making the openings much more slit-like than they were originally intended to be. At the same time, accommodation was added to this part of the building without expanding its perimeter. With all this in mind, it is remarkable how agreeable the chancellery contrives to be. Its offices are basically double-banked along internal corridors, which are joggled in plan so that they do not become institutional and monotonous. Light is brought into the middle of the plan from the roof, and through corridor ends, where there are views of the northeastern court and out over the sea. All this is good, but not absolutely remarkable in Finland.

The most powerful spatial sequence in the embassy is the suite of volumes that lines the western side of the residence's south wing and flows over into part of the west wing, all overlooking the south-west quadrant of the site with its lovely views over the falling lawns to the fjord and islands. The whole set of spaces can be thrown into one by opening folding walls, or it can be used as three separate reception places (and a dining room). The group gradually builds up from the south in section, with the most northerly volume being nearly twice as high as the sitting room at the tip of the wing. At each rise in height, there is a clerestory which brings the long rays of the summer evening sun into the body of the building where they ripple along ribbed wooden screens on the walls and ceilings. The interiors are white and luminous, modulated by the occasional use of the Jura stone, the oak and granite of the floors and the paintings by Frank Zeidler. Walls on the garden side are composed in plan of partly overlapping planes in a way rather reminiscent of the Mannisto church, You do not just get views directly out, light spills sideways on to the planes adding, as you move round the spaces, to the sensation of phenomenal transparency. Effects of changing and mysterious depth are increased by the light fittings (again similar to Mannisto) which hang from the ceiling on an irregular pattern of vertical wires.