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A design for the Slovenian embassy in Washington.
Matt Alderman, an architecture student at the University of Notre Dam, has designed a new (hypothetical) embassy
for Slovenia in the United States. The design blends Germanic,
Venetian, baroque and art nouveau styles into one extravagant whole.
Although I like extravagant buildings, such a titanic construction
would be hard (if not impossible) to justify: America accounts
for only 3% of Slovenia’s foreign trade, and American foreign-direct
investment (FDI) in Slovenia is less than 10% of the total. (source) But I think that’s beside the point…
Here is Matt’s blog post on the design, which will be published in
the 2005 Notre Dame School of Architecture student retrospective, Acroterion: Project for an Embassy for the Republic of Slovenia in Washington DC
Some more pictures:
Embassy 1 (Street and Garden facades)
Embassy 2 (Side facade)
Embassy 3 (Floor plan)
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.
Seriously? How many centuries is the design old? It wouldn’t surprise me if it was an Austrian Embassy, but… I guess we’re ready for the anschluss :)By the way, which part will function as a private Rupel’s residence and which as a huge wardrobe for his wife’s hats?
Didn’t know there is a disneyworld/ -land in Washington
I think you published this one a day early or something.
No offence, but it figures an American would design something so neo-classical.
Wrote my previous comment before the text under the picture was published.I sure hope it stays hypothetical. I mean I’m not really fond of all those dull concrete-glass modern buildings, but this… is a bit too much for me. If the building was 200 years old I’d probably like it, but we’re in 2005 for chrissake. Building a new building like this is not what I call extravagant. I call this nonsense.
oh man, this guy would be a strong favorite among certain ghosts still at FA. Dedicated to PleÄ?nik no doubt. That’s it, I’m posting this on 3delavnica.com I’m absolutely sure people will enjoy tearing this appart ;)and I thought Notre Dame was a serious school….
Just to quickly explain: This post got accidentally pushed through
yesterday before it was done. I just wasn’t paying attention. Or I’m
getting old. Probably the latter.I’m surprised no one has mentioned the "Chamber of the Janissaries" in the floor plan. (Janissaries being, of course, Ottoman soldiers, who never managed to occupy Slovenia but did manage to cause a lot of devastation.)
I think it’s a ridiculously megalomaniac design. Surely everybody would laugh at us. It’s a pity the author didn’t live a hundred years ago, he could send the design to that pompous windbag Kaiser Wilhelm II; it would make a splendid new embassy for the German Empire. And the designer would almost certainly get a nice medal or order with a sash and plenty of that gothic schrift of which he seems to be so very fond.
I’m not sure what to make of the “Chamber of the Janissaries”, now that you mention it. Why on earth would anybody want a room in the embassy named after a foreign military formation?
Slovenes are something special, aren’t we?
I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t a Matt Alderman’s mistake at all.Come and occupy us, just notify us soon enough, so we can prepare some food in time to welcome you in a proper manner.
Isn’t Slovenia suppose to get the former Yugoslav emassy in Washington? If it’s socialistic style, I prefer this one.
btw, if that sign in the middle of picture No. 1 was just a wee bit different, we’d be dealing with freemasonry
As far as the Janissaries, there is a book "Jurij Kozjak, slovenski
janicar" (Jurij Kozjak, slovenian Janissary). Janissaries were the
elite unit of the Turkish army, composed entirely of captives and
slaves. Since Slovenia was raided by the Turks quite a bit, the premise
is that some captives ended as Janissaries.
Reminds me of this,http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~qshi/images/album/DC/smithsonian.jpg (Smithsonian
Institute) which isn’t that bad when you look at other buildings and
embassies in Washington, DC. Now, if it only had red tile
roofs (rather than what looks like some metallic sheet in the drawings)
and a sentry at the gates in traditional costume…. That would be the
finishing touch.http://www.camcycle.org.uk/events/conferences/velocity1999/tn_dcp02535_jpg.jpg
I’m aware of the premise that some Slovenians ended up as Janissaries, but I still don’t understand why we might conceivably wish to have a room called “Chamber of the Janissaries” in an embassy of ours. I guess that dedicating a room to the Janissaries is supposed to make some kind of statement or express some kind of thought, but I can’t imagine what statement or thought this might be. I agree that the fact that the Janissaries existed is regrettable, but it was hardly a tragedy of such proportions as would need to have a whole embassy room dedicated to it.
There are some interesting comments on Matt’s post. He reveals, among other things:The professor who oversaw the studio this year was Slovenian and so had ties with the ambassador in DC and knew they needed a facility. It was a good choice as Slovenia is a fascinating country with a lot of history–perhaps too much, in some respects!Jernej: I see you’re as good as your word.
well, since I knew what was coming I guess one could call it a clear case of forum trolling
ill-advised: I was not aware that you were Slovenian and that
you knew about the Janissaries, so I just explained the connection.
Pardon me, sir. Your English is too good and your nickname does not
offer any hint of your provenance. :-)I agree that a "Chamber of
the Janissaries" is super weird. Perhaps it is an effort by the
catholic author to stir in some religious diversity… Either way, the
whole thing still looks more like a theme park than an embassy.
No need for a facility, we got the YU embassy.
It is a little obnoxious just for an embassy, but then again it does create a good theme, that embassies should be designed on the nations history and architecture….if we’re heading down that direction, then I think tin sheds are in order for Australia’s embassies
I was unaware that Ludwig II of Bavaria had come to life and was now ruler of Slovenia. Seriously, this is something that perhaps Dr. Doom of Latveria would have for his embassy.
Dear Sirs,Thank you for your comments on the Embassy. About the Janissaries: the reference is indeed to "Jurij Kozjak, slovenski janicar," and the decorative scheme would refer to that book and other works of the Slovene romantic period. The building is supposed to represent Slovene history moving from the present (the front facade) to the very early agrarian past (the garden in the back). The design is extremely extravagant, yes, but it was intended as a theoretical design. A real design would have been less elaborate. With regards to the classicism/modernism debates, I think the question of appropriateness hinges more on that than anything else. Classicism is becoming more popular these days (Notre Dame’s architecture school is an exemplary example of the phenomenon) so while my design is somewhat fanciful, it’s not quite as wild as one might think. (Or at least, in certain quarters, it would not seem as weird). The ambassador himself loved it, and congratulated me on my careful study of Slovene prototypes. Of course, he didnt have *too* much time to look at the work, and he won’t be paying for the thing.Plecnik was a big influence in a lof of our designs; almost everyone in the class except me did a Plecnik-style building. I wasn’t too terribly interested in him, however, and went deeper into the past. I do appreciate his work.The new Slovene embassy will be in the old Yugoslav one, a quite hideous concrete block off Embassy row. While this building is too big and grand for that site, I think there has to be a middle ground between my own work and the current project.Also, the roofs are indeed red tile; perhaps the renderings didn’t show up so well.Thank you for all your interest in the work. I am not Slovenian (I have a Carinthian somewhere in my family tree, from about ten centuries back, but she was probably German) but I have come to love what I know of your nation’s heritage.
unbelieveable…. It’s not an issue of classicism vs
modernism. Classic architecture can be great, it can be inspiring, it
can be a lot of things but what it most certainly cannot is maintain
relevance. What you did could perhaps, in some way, be
relevant and considered an option IF it were done 200 years ago. If
that. They would probably laugh at it back then as well.
When you take a design like that out of its historic context you only show total lack of any architectural taste and knowledge. A
society is supposed to be going forward and evolving, conservative
fools such as yourself are going the other way. Let me put it this
way…if you have any pride at all you should never, and I really mean
never, even consider becoming an architect. Perhaps if some Amish
design group is hiring